INSURANCE AGAINST SICKNESS.

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20829, 12 April 1933, Page 11

INSURANCE AGAINST SICKNESS.

PROFESSOR'S SUGGESTION. UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL. SYDNEY, April 10. At the annual meeting of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, Professor F. Gordon Bell (Professor of Surgery in the University of Otago) suggested the establishment of a university hospital under the direction of professors of medicine and surgery, and a system of compulsory universal sickness insurance. "The natural logical outcome of the Bosch clinical professorships is the establishment of a university hospital of about 200 beds, on the lines of the best German or Swiss university hospital clinics," he said. "The professor of surgery would have absolute control of 100 beds, with an assistant staff of varying grades of seniority. I would like to see this experiment made in Sydney, controlled by the university, and directed by its clinical professors. The students would benefit, and the public also in due course, from better and better trained doctors. It would have to be financed chiefly by the university, and partly by the State." Professor Bell was delivering the second George Syme oration. He criticised the free use of public hospitals for surgical treatment by persons who were able to pay for it.