HOSPITALS AND ELECTIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 106, 7 May 1938, Page 8

HOSPITALS AND ELECTIONS.

In condemning the present system of financing hospitals, the chairman of the Auckland Hospital Board, the Bev. TV. C. Wood, drew attention to a faet which is not widely recognised—that a greater proportion of people, upon falling ill, go to hospital. The change in this respect has been remarkable. In 10 years, while New Zealand's population has increased by 10.4 per cent, there has been an increase of 37.5 per cent in the number of in-patients. In the same period the number of hospital beds has increased by only 13.1 per cent. It is not surprising that the system has not been able to adjust itself easily to the newconditions, that the city hospitals, in particular, are overcrowded, and that there has been a continual increase in expenditure and consequently in the levies on local bodies. The problem is a large one, and growing, and it is not to be solved by any hospital board aeting alone.~ Still less is it to be solved by any group of candidates | organised on a. political basis and seeking election to a board. The present Auckland Hospital Board has long given the impression of a body wrestling with a problem that is too big for it, and its efforts have been the less I effectual because a section of its members has obviously been more concerned to advance "Labour principles," the relation of whieh to the welfare of the hospital is obscure. The electors should carefully study the qualifications of the many candidates for Hospital Board membership. It is not enough that a candidate should possess boundless sympathy with the sick. Sueh sympathy is common, and those who profess it least sometimes feel it the most strongly. For "the solution of hospital problems, as for any other, there is needed administrative capacity, and (particularly at the present time) a free-minded willingness to face the reorganisation of the hospital system which is overdue. Those candidates who assume that the ratepayers will continue to bear large annual increases in the hospital levy should be unhesitatingly rejected. The ratepaying horse has been I ridden too hard. j