GENERAL HOSPITALS

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 49, 26 August 1926, Page 15

GENERAL HOSPITALS

ATTITUDE OF MEDICAL MEN.

In a letter to tko Christehurch "Press," a correspondent, "Member of a Hospital Board," deals very fully with the question of hospital management and the attitude of the medical profession in. regard to suggested reforms of the system.

"During the lust ten years, or rather loss," he says, "there has been a growing discontent on the part of ratepayers, who contribute so largely towards hospital buildings, equipment, and hospital maintenance, as well as others, against being deprived of .the benefit of public hospital treatment, and at the same time having to pay for a much more costly private service. Especially has this feeling grown since operations have become so common. To have to go into a private hospital or nursing home and pay the fees there and the surgeon's fee for the operation has meant a severe tax upon tho finances of perhaps a struggling man with a wife and family to support. Quite a number of small hospital boards have realised the position, and have opened the doors of their hospitals to all who choose to apply for admission. First-class medical men have been appointed to the charge of these hospitals, and the result is that the outside medical men are losing paying patients. That is shortly the foundation of the attacks upon hospital management and hospital boards. Thero is no gainsaying that fact, no matter what the medical men may say, and, having had this pointed out, those who have read medical men's letters and interviews will bo able to see what their arguments are directed at. They also fear an extension of the 'open-door' policy, for those who read the rinding of the Commissioner in the inquiry into the Bryce case in connection with the Palmerston North Hospital, will remember that he laid it down that the public hospitals must be open to the public.

After dealing with several other aspects of the question, the writer states: "I will quote two cases out of a numof others I am personally acquainted with, which will mako this matter clearer: A patient was told by a medical man that an operation for appendicitis was advisable, and recommended he» to go into the local private hospital. She preferred the public hospital, and after a stay of thirteen days there came out with a bill for £5 17s. About the same time a litle girl went home ill from school. The family medical man was called in, and he said the child had appendicitis, and must be operated on at once.,. She was taken away in the doctor's car to the local private hospital, and operated on next day. The father, who is a working man with a wife and two children, received a bill for 45 guineas, yet the public spital was only an hour's car journey away. Can one wonder that people are preferring to go to the public hospitals for operations if they can get in there?"