Infant Health Submissions On Control Of Karitane Hospitals

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28980, 22 August 1959, Page 14

Infant Health Submissions On Control Of Karitane Hospitals

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, August 21.

The six Karitane hospitals should be taken over by the appropriate hospital boards, said Mr G. S. Orr, on behalf of the Health Department, at the final public sitting today of the Consultative Committee on Pre-school Health Services.

If that were not ac registered as private hospi subsidies in the same way

ceptable, they should be itals and treated for State as other private hospitals.

Mr Orr also submitted that: (a) Public health nurses should supervise the care of infants and pre-school children in rural communities. (b) Public health nurses should supervise the care of Maori children. (c) The department’s doctors, supplemented by general practitioners, should make the periodic medical examinations of pre-school children. (d) The department should continue to administer its child health clinics and other clinics. (e) If an advisory committee on children’s health were set up, as the Plunket Society had advocated, it should be under the Board of Health. Mr Orr said that Social Security benefits and subsidies amounted to 65 per cent, of the total income of the Karitane hospitals from 1954 to 1958. The Plunket Society had asked for a contribution of £1 a patient a day, as well as the present subsidies on donations and capital expenditure. If it received, instead of £l, £1 0s 6d, which was what private hospitals received, and also received its present subsidies, but no allowance for depreciation, it would have, on the latest accounts, an operating surplus of £11,852 a year, or, with allowance for depreciation, £7464. It was unreasonable to ask for assistance on that scale. Christchurch Hospital When Mr Orr said that State assistance to the Christchurch Karjtane Hospital was 84 per cent, of its expenditure, the chairman (Sir George Finlay) said he had sensed a lack of interest by the Christchurch Plunket Society branch in its hospital, and that figure was perhaps indicative of it. If the Consultative Committee took the view that the society should continue to run the hospitals, the hospitals should be registered as private hospitals, said Mr Orr. They would then receive £1 0s 6d a patient a day. instead of 13s 6d as at present, and the department would be provided with a measure of control. There was no reason why Karitane hospitals should be in a position different from that of hospitals which the Salvation Army and the churches ran. Those institutions received State assistance with capital works as well as £1 0s 6d. Statistics indicated that Karitane hospitals did not care for the majority of the infants who were within their scope, Mr Orr said. It was not proposed that the Karitane hospitals be closed, but that they be integrated with the

general hospitals scheme. If the society wished to continue its interest in them, the department could delegate its powers in respect of them to a committee of the society. Ey taking responsibility for the hospitals, the department would relieve the society of a pressing financial anxiety. Costs always rose, and whatever relief was now given could be temporary. The chairman: That word “relieve” is a bit akin to Hitler’s “liberate." Overlapping Alleged There was overlapping by the work of public health nurses and Plunket nurses in rural areas, said Mr Orr. The public health nurse was better able to do all the work because she already travelled the routes, and, in many cases, already knew the whole family into which a baby was born. ’ Public health nurses were already caring for 90 per cent, of Maori children, who, because of their living conditions, required more than the specialised Plunket service, and Plunket nurses should not be encouraged to enter the field. The system of periodic medical examination of pre-school children by general practitioners proposed by the Plunket Society would require elaborate administration, said Mr Orr. Departmental officers already examined school children, so why should they not examine preschool children? The department did not see any urgency in the need of a committee to advise the Minister of Health on children’s health, as advocated by some witnesses, but. if one were established, it should not be divorced from the health’ administration as they had proposed, he said.