HOSPITAL SERVICE

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 93, 21 April 1931, Page 5

HOSPITAL SERVICE

CRITIC OF MANAGEMENT

Mr. E.-Bold, a Ratepayers' Association candidate for the Hospital Board, has forwarded a statement of his views upon hospital, administration. Mr. Bold states that he had read with interest the' reported statements by Dr. Campbell Begg regarding hospital .management, and also discussed the matter with him and other medical gentlemen in the city, and he'was satisfied'that'a case had been mado out for drastic investigation into the_ affairs of the local hospital administration. Serious accusations had been made concerning the nature of and quality of attention given patients, and the methods of management in vogue. This might be partly explained simply by a lack of recognition that a system which might be adequate for a small institution was obviously totally unsuitable for the huge concern into which the Wellington Hospital has developed. It, was, he thought, abundantly clear that the professional attendants in such an institution.as the Wellington Hospital should have qualified supervision, able, to advise and recommend the governing body of the adequacy and quality of. the. service given, and particularly that the slogan of the whole staff must be service first, last, and all the time. Startling statements had been made of the lack of that essential, and instances had occasionally obtruded themselves to the notice of the public, and the likely suppression of many more had unfortunately been imagined. The immense increase in payments levied on Wellington ratepayers for hospital and charitable aid purposes was alarming, and some means must be found to check this annual levy. A total of £37,000 in 1924 jumped to £78,000 in 1930. A large portion of this, of course, was to meet the actual cost of hospital service as against the payments recovered from patients. He was informed that the total cost per head per diem of in-patients was between 18s and 20s. The charge made was. at the rate of 9s per day, but of that something less than 25 per cent, was actually recovered. It would thus be seen that the ratepayers contributed something like 16s 9d per day for each patient's cost to the hospital, which-certainly could not be defended. In the first place, the total' cost was too high, and whether the remedy was reorganisation or retrenchment, or both, must bo carefully investigated. No one, of course, would care to identify himself with a system of callousness regarding patients' circumstances, yet tho budget must be got somewhere nearer to a balance, and there could be no sound objection to the adoption of some course' akin to tho advice said to have been given by a. wise old member of the most benevolent profession in the world to a young practitioner, to "collect the fee while the tear is m the oyc." FRIENDLY SOCIETIES. It had been brought to his notice that the relations between the friendly soI cieties and the Hospital Board were far from satisfactory from the point of view 'of the former. As one who had feeeu connected with the 'movement

for nearly 40 years, he, was more than convinced that the magnificent work done by these societies in initiatively providing its members with medical attendance, medicine, and sustenatory payments during sickness, had relieved the hospital authorities of an immense amount of liability-which would otherwise have been thrown upon them, and incidentally the ratepayers and taxpayers, and where assistance could fairly, be given by the hospital authorities to such societies, the .claim was well founded. If elected, it was his intention to assist whole-heartedly in a thorough investigation into the conditions obtaining, and where reforms were shown to be necessary, to insist on them being carried into effect.