• UNDERPAID DOCTORS
SIR,-My experience as a panel doctor has been quite different from that of your correspondent Dr. Taylor. Last year was the cheapest year's motoring I have ever had since 1929 owing to the very low depreciation incurred by an old car. I went 8,1oo miles at a cost of 2.2d. per mile. I have only one car, and it has certainly been very awkward trying to manage when the car was in dock. As to his remark about medical certificates, I think that any doctor who fills in more than some To per cent. of these is a bad manager ; his dispenser should do it for him. I wonder what Dr. Taylor would think of a business man who wrote his own letters and filled in his own forms. I think that be will find the ljirchase Tax that he pays on drugs works out at only a very small percentage of the price he receives for his medicines. Finally he says, "What national scheme can avoid being loaded with paper by the ton, and records and reports by the million? " Surely one of the greatest advances that we all expect from a State Health Service is to find really well-kept notes for our patients. When I had to examine a battalion of regulars before mobilisation at the outbreak of war I was greatly impressed by the beautifully kept notes for the men ; one could see at a glance what their previous medical history had been. At present there is a tremendous waste of medical energy in re-examining patients countless times without having access to their past medical history. More Paper work and more secretarial asistanoe will cause a real advance in the standards of British medicine.—Yours faithfully,
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