EXPENDITURE ON HOSPITALS

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27073, 23 June 1953, Page 10

EXPENDITURE ON HOSPITALS

WORKS DEPARTMENT PROPOSALS

MORE EFFECTIVE CONTROL SOUGHT

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, June 22. The Government architect (Mr F. Gordon Wilson) today listed methods by which more efficient and effective control of hospital building expenditure might be achieved. He was giving evidence on behalf of the Ministry of Works to the Consultative Committee on Hospital Reform. He suggested:—The adoption of a uniform standard of hospital design on a national basis; more research into all aspects of the planning 1 of hospitals and the addition of standards planning units; closer liaison between the designing architects and the Health Department; the building of regional base hospitals for specialised services; annual programming-long-term planning for each board district and each hospital site. “It is considered that the measures suggested require a greater degree of central control of the design of hospital building than at present exists,” Mr Wilson said. He recommended that long-term programmes be submitted by boards to the Minister of Health for approval. The Health Department should approve long-term site development plans to meet approved programmes. A building programme within the framework of the development plan should be submitted annually by each board to the department. These annual programmes, Mr Wilson said, should then be placed before an inter-departmental hospital building committee, with representatives from the Departments of Health, Works, and the Treasury. The recommended programme should then pass to the Cabinet for consideration as part of the Government works prdgramme. Referring to the adoption of a uniform standard of hospital design on a national basis, Mr Wilson said it had been found that the standards of building construction and finish had been unduly high and costly. After such plans had been completed and approved by the board concerned "dt was very difficult to arrange economies,” he said.