MODERN HOSPITALS

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 132, 1 December 1936, Page 8

MODERN HOSPITALS

PROPOSED LOAN

IS EXPENDITURE NECESSARY?

A correspondent wntes xo me Post":— ~ No one doubts that it is the duty and privilege of the community to provide means for the treatment of the sick and needy in its midst, and that it is necessary that a certain proportion of these sick people should be centralised and a more or less "massmethod" of treatment (as opposed to individual treatment iri homes) must be provided. Hence the modern hospital. But a sharp distinction should be drawn between a hospital and a "convalescent" home or infirmary. A modern hospital is, as we are finding out, a very expensive luxury and its beds should be strictly reserved for those requiring highly technical forms of treatment, and actually in receipt of it. INFORMATION WANTED. With this in mind it is pertinent to suggest that the Wellington Hospital Board should prove to ratepayers that an extension of the hospital is necessary before the ratepayers agree to find the money. An accurate return of figures for the following questions would be helpful:— 1. Total number of patients occupying beds for more than two days last year, and average duration of stay in hospital. 2. Number of acute cases (accident, operation, or sickness) and average duration of stay in hospital, (a) length of stay, and (b) length of stay after acute stage was over. i (3) Number of persons suffering from chronic diseases whose stay in hospital was more than a month. CONVALESCENT HOMES. If the true figures can be obtained, and the ratepayers have every right to them, they should be illuminating. It is not impossible that they will show that the Hospital is being used largely as a convalescent home. Now, convalescent homes are vastly less expensive to build and run than a modernly equipped hospital, and if they are erected in a salubrious and sunny sub-1 urb, infinitely more conducive to patients' recovery. Patients in the convalescent stages of their troubles and patients with chronic systemic diseases do not require the continuous skilled medical treatment that others do with acute troubles, but by occupying beds in a public hospital they have the effect of making that hospital smaller than it really is. But suppose (for the sake of argument) that it can be shown that a larger central hospital is necessary. One of the reasons advanced is that the present building is out of date. Now a curious thing about hyper-civilised communities is that each generation is convinced that it has reached the last word in the arts and sciences only to be really convinced in ten or twenty years' time of their fallacy. This happens over and over again—yet no popularly elected board ever seems to profit by such experience. CHANGING CONDITIONS. Nothing is more certain than that the £600,000 hospital now proposed, would be, in 1945, as hopelessly "out of date" as the present one is now. Yet it would be too valuable to be scrapped. The solution is to build a deliberately temporary type of building whose maximum life should be limited to 20 years, which could then, in the interests of science and sanitation, be pulled down and burned, and another up-to-date building erected. This type of hospital building was used during the war with the, greatest efficiency for our soldiers —in them sick men were made well, and that is the be-all and end-all of a hospital. Convalescent homes on the other hand can be of a more permanent character because the "after" treatment is not so affected by the advances of medicine and surgery. It therefore seems to be incontrovertible that the worst possible service is being done for the sick and suffering of 1940 by sinking and fixing large amounts of money now in bricks and mortar at Newtown. A further embarrassment which will arise from greatly extended public hospitals will be their staffing. There will inevitably be an outcry for more young surgeons; that will lead to more young men going in for medicine and (since the population of New Zealand is not growing as rapidly as the hospitals) their finding it difficult to make a living afterwards.