HOSPITAL CONTROL

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 114, 16 May 1941, Page 8

HOSPITAL CONTROL

The Auckland Hospital Board I controls the Public Hospital and the Infirmary; it also has a considerable degree of control over the finances of the City Council and every borough and county council in the i Auckland metropolitan area. Not until the board has decided how ■ much money it will require can these other local bodies confidently estimate their own expenditure and strike their rates. This system, in which one public body does the spending and others have to find part of the money, has obvious demerits, but while it continues ratepayers in their own interests should scrutinise with particular care the qualifications of those who aspire to control the hospital administration. In no other administration are there so many temptations to unwarranted expenditure and so many potential sources of waste. In no other administration, therefore, is there a greater need for the exercise of sound judgment. The declaration of humanitarian sentiments is not a sufficient qualification for membership of the Hospital Board. The Wellington Hospital Board, under a Labour majority, has provided an example of how a body of well-intentioned persons can make an expensive muddle. In Auckland the Labour Representation Committee, bidding for full control of the Hospital Board, as of all other important local bodies, makes the first plank of a "promising" platform the appointment of "a complete, well qualified and permanent stipendiary and medical staff, free from outside medical influences." Leaving aside all other considerations, including the cost, it can be said of this proposal to make a "closed hospital" of the largest institution in New that it is open to most

serious objection on the most important ground—that of the welfare of patients, both inside and outside the hospital. It should be adopted, if ever, only after a most thorough examination of its merits and demerits. Such an examination it has not had, nor can it have, on the eve of an election. But this is only one, though the most important, of a number of proposals which the Labour party, if it gains office, will blithely proceed to attempt to put into operation. It is for the ratepayers—who will pay—to decide whether the Labour candidates, of whom only two have substantial experience of hospital administration, should be given the opportunity. And there should be no thought by anyone that this is a matter upon which he, or she, can safely neglect to vote.