Hospital Annexes For Elderly Patients

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29749, 16 February 1962, Page 8

Hospital Annexes For Elderly Patients

The North Canterbury Hos. pita! Board is thinking of building old people's annexes to each of its major hospitals, and the Health Department is in favour of the idea, the medical superintendent - inchief of the board (Dr. T. Morton) said yesterday. The annexes would be for those old folk who were not acutely ill but who needed nursing care, Dr. Morton said.

At present, these old people were taking up general hospital beds which were needed by other patients, but there was nowhere else to send them, Dr. Morton explained. They were entitled to hospital treatment, but they did not need all the services which had to be provided at a general hospital. Annexes were thought preferable to separate institutions because of the difficulty anticipated in attracting nursing staff to full-time old people’s work. “This kind of work is regarded unrewarding by many young people.” said Dr. Morton. “The division of the long-stay patients among annexes at several hospitals would mean that at each hospital the nursing staff could be given turns at working in the annex, which would ease the burden for them.” Asked whether the number

of elderly patients in hospital had been affected by the Health Department's recent ruling that “non-hospital” patients should be charged for board, Dr. Morton said that very few indeed had been charged. The onus was on the patient’s medical practitioner to give a certificate saying that the patient did not need medical attention, and many doctors were naturally loth to give such a certificate in respect of an old person. Moreover, once a patient was charged, he or she was liable to get the impression that the charge gave the right to a bed in hospital indefinitely. Making a charge was not. in fact, a very practical way of discouraging people from staying in hospital. It might have more effect in other hospital board districts where the local board did not have old people's homes giving accommodation to the more active , among the elderly.