TUBERCULOSIS

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 175, 20 April 1929, Page 6

TUBERCULOSIS

PROPOSED GROUPING OF BOARDS RESOLUTION BY WAIRARAPA BODY Masterton, April 19. The suggestion contained in a letter from the Hospital Boards Association to the effect that, for the purpose of ensuring a more uniformly active policy with regard to the treatment of tuberculosis, and also with a view to sharing more equitably the burden of the more expensive measures against tuberculosis, hospital boards should combine into groups, two for the North Island and two for the South Island, and take over and administer tuberculosis sanatoria within the respective districts of the combined boards, were discussed at length at to-day’s meeting of the Wairarapa Hospital Board. The following resolution was eventually carried:—“That this board affirms the desirability of establishing a joint board to take over the Pukeora and Otaki sanatoria, and that a conference be called of the hospital boards constituting the southern group of the North Island for the purpose of considering the advisability of joining, the cost to each board and the total cost of maintenance entailed, the decisions of the conference to be subject to ratification by the individual boards.!’ The- chairman (Mr. W. Fisher) stated that he had been concerned with the question of cost. At present the cost per patient sent by the board to Pukeora . wag Ils. per day, and "to Otaki 9s. per day. He thought that under the proposed scheme the cost would be increased. It was a question of whether the board could do anything to block the scheme, and whether it was advisable to block it in an.y case. The question was a difficult one, and had been receiving consideration for the past 20 years. Now a concrete proposal had come forward. Figures in connection with the cost of sending patients to Pukeora and Otaki wore presented by the secretary (Mr. F. Green). During the past four years 20 patients had been sent to Pukeora at a total cost of £2221. and nine patients to Otaki at a total cost of £916. This was a total cost of £3137," of which the board had received back £317, or approximately 10 per cent.

That the proposal was worth very serious consideration was the opinion of Mr. T. V. Moore, who pointed out that the Wairarapa Board would have the advantage of not having patients sent back to the Masterton Hospital to be maintained there. He pointed out, however, that there were 18 boards in the'proposed group, three of which he thought could be struck otit. and a managing committee consisting of.one representative from each board would prove unwieldy. Probably there would be only eighteen patients in at any one time.. Mr. Moore moved that the board affirm the desirability of the proposal and. that a conference of interested boards be called to discuss the question. Mr. W. B. Martin said that it.was regrettable that the board did not know to what it was committing itself. If, when it came to ratification, the boards’ hands would not be tied, he thought that Mr. Moore’s resolution was the best action. . Eventually the resolution was carried.