HOSPITAL CONTROL

Evening Post, Volume XCIX, Issue 121, 22 May 1920, Page 6

HOSPITAL CONTROL

MINISTER WILL GIVE CAREFUL CONSIDERATION. (»T TtIEBRAPH.— SPECIAL TO THIS POST.) - . ' AUCKLAND,. This Day. When replying to a deputation yesterday the Minister of Public Health (Hon. C. J. Parr) made seme observations on the general question of aaministering hospitals. He said he had received numerous suggestions that the whole of the cost of hospitals and charitable aid should be paid out of the Consolidated Fund. The first in connection with.the administration . of institutions where ' unfortunate people Were tended was efficiency, and whether the State could handle matters better than the present system. The contributions from local bodies was a large question. As soon as he could get the burden of education (his other portfolio) a little easier, he proposed to give the matter of hospital administration careful and impartial consideration. He confessed that hospital board work was new. to him. In considering the matter of hospitals and their' administration a. Minister mnst do his best for the people. A matter which would have to be considered, and it might weigh with the Finance Minister, was that the Dominion might be' aapproaching' a time of a little stringency. He would not say more than that. That question would 1 have to be'considered in any State System of control of hospitals; that was to say. of the State providing the whole of the finance, because even if it did there might possibly be still some form .of local I control. The boards collected close on [ £500,000 per year from local ratepayers, I and any scheme for the Government meeting the whole cost of hospitals and I similar institutions would have to provide for the raising of that half million of money out of the Consolidated Fund. It could be quite understood that it was "not all beer and skittles" being Minister of Public Health.