Difference over Cheviot hospital

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34087, 26 February 1976, Page 2

Difference over Cheviot hospital

The Health Department and the North Canterbury Hospital Board are at odds over the fate of the former maternity hospital at Cheviot.

The board would like to see it converted into a health centre, equipped with a limited-capability X-ray machine.

The Health Department! wants to close it officially,] and says that because the area’s population warrants only one doctor for Cheviot, the board should meet the costs of conversion.

The department says it is not bound to provide a grant under the Health Centres Act, because these grants apply only to centres housing two doctors or more. It is also against the installation of an X-ray unit on the ground that these should not be dotted about the countryside. The board maintains, however, that Cheviot with a health centre and X-ray machine would

with suspected fractures trips of 100 miles or more) to hospitals in larger centres.

Mr T. C. Grigg, chairman of the North Canterbury Hospital Board, said yesterday that 80 per cent of X-rays for fractures were negative. Without the machine at Cheviot, a lot of people would travel a long way only to find they had no fracture, he said. Akaroa, Kaikoura, and Hanmer Springs all had l X-ray machines.