HOSPITAL RATING

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23401, 7 August 1941, Page 10

HOSPITAL RATING

Sir,—Your recent editorials on hospital rating and nutrition are timely, logical, ,and necessary. The crux of the matter lies in your phrase, The only alternative, in practice, is to accept the principle of full national charge and, full national control, and to proceed to a comprehensive form accordingly.” This, to my mind, is the only solution and has been advocated by: me for 28 years with varying success. Hospitals, those monumental tombstones of medical maladministration, should, under a. correct system, be decreasing instead of the reverse; and the present case of underlapping and overlapping in all its branches should be eliminated and physical and mental evils be a thing of the past. For the last 100 years medical attention has been mainly devoted to the curative side of medicine. What,is wanted is increased attention from birth to death. The remedy lies in a revised .training curriculum; policlinics in place of hospitals; complete specialisation, including that of the important specialty of the family doctor, who should be chosen for hiS personality, character, and ability; the gradual elimination of private , practice; the • prevention of overlapping and underlapping in all branches :of administration with special emphasis on prevention and health protection, which would necessitate a compulsory examination from the cradle to the grave; last, t but not least, the election of a head man entirely free from political ahd departmental control. —Yours, etc., N. K. CQX. M.D. August 6, 1941.