WELLINGTON HOSPITAL

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 6, 7 July 1938, Page 10

WELLINGTON HOSPITAL

Commission Recommends Extensions •

SUBSIDIARY INSTITUTION FOR HUTT VALLEY

Total Expenditure of £863,000

A development programme for the Wellington Hospital area involving an expenditure of £863,075, including the provision of a combined general and maternity hospital with full-time out-patients' department in the Hutt Valley, is recommended by the Royal Commission which recently inquired into the present inadequacies and prospective hospital needs of the* district and whose report was released today. The Commission'recommends that the first works to be put in hand be the additions to the Nurses' Home antf. boiler house at the main hospital at Newtown, and that improvements to the Children's Hospital, the erection of new bulk stores, laundry alterations, provision of a temporary ward, erection of the Hutt Valley Hospital, construction of new mortuary at Newtown, and the building of the Centenary block should be proceeded with in that order. ! On the question of paying wards advocated by many witnesses at the inquiry, the Commission expresses the opinion that, in view of the urgency of improving the ordinary accommodation at the Wellington Hospital and to do away with the gross overcrowding existing there at present, this ordinary accommodation must first of all be provided. When this has been done the erection of a private block should be considered with such modification of the system obtaining elsewhere as would meet local conditions.