Country Hospitals

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21226, 26 July 1934, Page 10

Country Hospitals

At its meeting yesterday the North Canterbury Hospital Board received from its medical superintcnj dent, Dr. Fox, a report on the [country hospitals of North Canterbury, which was most disturbing. Dr. Fox noted that " many of our " cottage hospitals are not as great "a success as they might be" and that their start's show a tendency to "staleness" and a "dug-in attitude." There is, or course, nothing very surprising in this when it is remembered that there are hospitals in North Canterbury in which, on a yearly average, only one-half, and sometimes only one-third, of the available beds are occupied. Indeed, some hospitals are without patients for weeks at a time. In such institutions the problem of maintaining the keenness and efficiency of staffs is necessarily a difficult one. Dr. Fox suggests that some improvement can be effected by bringing the matrons of country hospitals to the base hospitals for periodic refresher courses But another passage in his report suggests that the problem can be approached from another angle, lie mentions that during last month 150 maternity patients were treated in Christchurch who might have been treated in country hospitals. A committee of the Hospital Board is to report upon this drift; and in doing so it should consider carefully and dispassionately whether the cost of some of the country hospitals in North Canterbury is not out of all proportion to their usefulness. The country hospitals, it should be remembered, were built at a timewhen roads were bad and motorcars uncomfortable and unreliable. But although improved transport ! lias made many of them unnecessary, their numbers have not been reduced because local pride insists on their retention. In an article printed in " The Press" two years ago Dr. Campbell Begg pointed out that there were 41 hospitals in New Zealand with an average of less than five patients a day and that the average weekly cost of treating each patient in these institutions was £8 15s sd, an estimate which does not allow for administrative expenses or interest and depreciation on capital. Some of the hospitals in this class can be justified on the score that they provide medical treatment, in remote and inaccessible districts. On the other hand, if some of them were closed their patients could t without danger, be transported to base hospitals and there treated more efficiently and more cheaply. There are 13 country hospitals in North Canterbury iwith a daily yvcrpgo of Jesp thnn

five patients. The Hospital Board has a duty to the ratepayers to say frankly whether all of these institutions are necessary.