HOSPITAL COSTS

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 79, 30 September 1930, Page 14

HOSPITAL COSTS

(To'tfic Editor.)

.. ■ Sir,—Your correspondent, " it-count-ant,",:secms to be adept at misrspreseut■ing the position of the New gedaud hospitals. ■ Instead of' taking up the iiguyes given by the chairman a.t ..die lass meeting oftlie Wellington-Hospital.Board relating to ilie average slay per patient in 2500 hospitals in America and Canada, and refuting them, he draws a rod-herring over the trail- in sundry and devious ways. Your correspondent brackets every general and surgical hospital in New Zealand as being inefficient because-the average stay per patient is too'long. The chairman's figure*, taken from reliable sources, show that the average stay in the Wellington Hospital is less than in America and, Canada. Your correspondent then quotes the case of a private hospital in New Zealand,.where the average stay per patient is 11.7 days, and says an average of 13 days is a fair thing for New Zealand hospitals. And this in the face of the most systematic nation in the world having ah average days' stay per patient of 20.94. I would like to ask where his eflicient hospital is. Is it not a specialist institution, mainly devoted to operations? Is it not chiefly run for people who can pay high fees for residence, who take up their apartments at arranged dates, and who desire to get home for convalescence as quickly as possible after the operation is over? Is it fair to class such an institution with a, general public hospital, where these conditions are almost entirely lacking?—l am, etc.'.

RATEPAYER,