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Show Health Unit Of County Under Fire i County Medical Society Proposes Pro-poses New Set-up At Lower Cost. 1 Elimination of the county health unit and a substitu- , tion of a proposed better system sys-tem of examination and t'ol-low-up work for pre-school and school children at a lower cost to the county, was proposed pro-posed by members of the Utah County Medical Society which met with the county com-, missioners Wednesday morning. I The medical society, which had , Dr. Stanley Clark as chairman, propose that the county hire three nurses, one for each school district, at a total .cost of $2700, and the local doctors would do all the examinations ex-aminations and the inoculations and follow-up work, work which is not now being done, the doctor; charge. Saving Is Argued Under the new se.-up a saving of $2999- would be effected. If the county paid all the nurses' salaries and a saving of $-1349 if the school districts pay hulf the costs. Last year the health unit budget was A. O. Smoot, commissioner, asked that- the- schools cooperate in hiring hir-ing the nurses, stating that last . year, when a similar proposal was made to the school districts to hire nurses in co-operation with the health unit, Alpine district could not or would not co-operate, and the proposal did not go over. At the present time there is one doctor, doc-tor, Dr. Palmer R. Bowdish, and one nurse, Mrs. Sarah Lyance. for the entire county. The doctors ridiculed the idea of these two being able to handle the entire county, and pointed out that the traveling expense would be eliminated if local doctors did the work. I School Men Speak I The stiperintenttents of the three I school districts, H: A. Dixon of ' Provo, David Gourley of Alpine, and Melvin' Wilson, of Nebo, met with the group and pointed out that little or no work is being done by the county unit with school children, it having, time, only for the pre-school child. - Dr. Joseph Hughes, Spanish Fork, who has been examining students stu-dents in his city for 20 years free I of charge, attacked the county unit I as discriminatory. Mrs. Lyance, the nurse, has made a practice of sending students to Salt Lake for treatment, ignoring the local doctors, doc-tors, he saic.. They sometimes used local school trucks for transportation trans-portation to Salt Lake, he said. The medical society propose to give all school and pre-school children chil-dren an annual examination and t continue with follow-up work where it is needed. Dr. V. F. Houston, American Fork; told the group he had conducted con-ducted examinations for the schools in Alpine last year , and at the American Fork schools this year, free of charge. Dr. J. W. Aird, Provo, commended com-mended the work of the county iunit and Dr. Bowdish, but said that there was entirely too much work to be done with the setup the county had. Dr. Stanley Clark moved that ,the commissioners strike out of the budget the $5699 as now set up, and the new program be worked work-ed out as the group continued the arguments at about noon time. Dr. Bowdish explained to the commissioners that the children taken to Salt Lake were taken because be-cause they needed spocial treatment that could not l,a obtained in Utah countv and that not one cent was paid for the work done for them. He also cited figures to show that, contrary to the statements of some of the members of the society, con siderable work had been dom among school children in school h spite of the amount of work thai had to be covered by the unit. The doctors will formulate c lecommendutlon to be presented tc the commissioners before the budget is adopted. |