KEY POINTS:
Parents are paying up to $120 to take their children to the doctor after hours in some parts of the country.
A survey of 51 after-hours services by the Child Poverty Action Group has found that fees for children under 6 range from free up to $120 at
one Bay of Plenty service. The next highest fee was $42 for a service in Canterbury.
Most regions ranged from free to about $25 for children under 6, and from around $20 to $40 for older children.
The group has called for free primary healthcare for children at the after-hours services, as in Britain and other developed countries.
Auckland University's Dr Nikki Turner, a co-author of the healthsection of the group's report on child poverty, said she knew from her own part-time medical practice that many low-income families delayed taking their children to the doctor because of the cost of after-hours services.
The report shows steep rises during the 1990s in the numbers of children hospitalised with "diseases of poverty" such as bronchial illnesses, serious skin infections and gastroenteritis.
"This increase represented a tipping point for child disease. Itcorrelates with the marked rise in child poverty which occurred at the same time," the report says.
"In recent years there has been a levelling out of hospitalisation rates for many diseases, and in some cases a small fall.
"However, rates remain high by OECD standards and have not fallen back to pre-1991 levels. Hospitalisation rates for serious skin infections remain double the rates of the US and Australia."
Dr Turner said the survey of after-hours fees covered only about three services in each district health board and was not necessarily representative, but it showed how inconsistent fees were between services.
"It doesn't mean that overall the Bay of Plenty is more expensive than anywhere else, because we didn't ring every service," she said. "The $120 fee was in an area where the only after-hours service is a call to the doctor to come to the home, so it gets very high."
