The Press FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1941. Hospital Reorganisation

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23444, 26 September 1941, Page 6

The Press FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1941. Hospital Reorganisation

In moving the loans resolution necessary for the first part of the North Canterbury Hospital Board’s reconstruction scheme at the Christchurch Hospital, the chairman of the finance committee, Mr C. Flavell, reviewed and defended the board’s policy, or rather, the changes which have produced its new policy. The board’s original proposals, under which a new subsidiary hospital was to be built at Cashmere and the present hospital reorganised thereafter, were approved by all contributing authorities. Against the new proposals, he said, only 10 (of the 32) had expressed any objection, and only two of these had objected to them in substance, the others confining their objection to the rating obligations created; and in Mr Flavell’s view such a reception of the scheme indicates that “local bodies have faith “in the board.” It may do so; but it may also indicate nothing more than a tendency to look at the rates first and policy issues second, and Mr Flavell’s remark that the new proposals avoid (for the time being) “ the loan burden “which the building of the subsidiary hospital “ would have entailed ” is perhaps his most illuminating one. His defence of the board on the rating issues need not now concern us, though it is much too sweeping to say that the board has “ no control ” over rating, being responsible merely to “ administer the law ” as it is; but as a defence of the board’s policy Mr Flavell’s statement, it must be said, was gravely defective. The objections presented by the two local authorities were not quoted. It is difficult to believe that Mr Flavell met them, whatever they were; quite certainly he did not meet those which have been stated in this column. “ Owing to war conditions,” Mr Flavell said, “ we were forced completely to recast our “ building programme and to abandon the subsidiary hospital scheme.” It can be accepted that the building programme had to be recast; it cannot be accepted, without better evidence than hgs yet been given, that the subsidiary project had to be abandoned. Deferred, yes; but abandoned, why? The urgent demands on the board, as the war presented them, have had to be met by the extensions at Burwood. The developments at the central hospital, covered by the loan proposal now approved by the board, contribute and will contribute nothing at all to the “ almost immediate provision of a “large number of hospital beds,” the need to which, as Mr Flavell says, the board had to readjust its plans. These developments do not increase the accommodation at the hospital; they are preliminary to others which, when they are in turn undertaken and completed, will eventually do so. In other words, the urgent problem, which Mr Flavell says could not have been solved by proceeding with the subsidiary scheme, is not solved, either, by proceeding to the first stage of reconstruction at the main hospital. It has been solved wholly and only by building at Burwood. On the evidence produced, it is therefore misleading to suggest that the imperative need to solve it obliged the board to “ abandon ” the subsidiary scheme, and even more misleading to imply, as Mr Flavell does, that it was obliged to prefer and adopt an enlarged plan of reconstruction at the main hospital instead. The fact seems clearly to be that, when the board was impelled to build at Burwood, it was still free to follow the long-term policy of (i) building a subsidiary at Cashmere and (ii) then reorganising the central hospital; and the only question was whether building at Cashmere could and should be begun at once or whether it must or should be deferred. A decision to abandon the subsidiary project and concentrate on much more elaborate rebuilding plans at the central hospital could not be supported by the reasons of present expediency that Mr Flavell suggests. It could only be justified by reasons strong enough to prove that the subsidiary scheme had all along been unsound and that the enlarged reconstruction scheme at the central hospital, in spite of the evident drawbacks, would all along have been a wiser choice. No such reasons have been stated, or even sketched. Until they are, and are found substantial, the public will be entitled to conclude that there are none, that the board has muddled and plunged, and that its want of candour in the matter amounts to a breach of faith with the public.