HOSPITAL COSTS AND DELAYS

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 150, 21 December 1940, Page 10

HOSPITAL COSTS AND DELAYS

As a complete statement of facts from the Hospital Board's viewpoint is to be drawn up and submitted to the public, it is advisable to suspend final judgment on the delays and changes that have occurred and the extra costs that have arisen in carrying out building schemes. It was frankly admitted by several members of the board on Thursday night that the board itself was not entirely free from blame, and in any case it would be futile to argue that any administrative authority was blameless if it failed over a period to cope with delays or difficulties arising from another quarter." The board is elected to control hospital business, and if its powers are insufficient or if it is unduly hampered, it should, in justice to.itself, have made that fact known before this. It would be equally futile to attempt to separate the Department of Health from the Minister in charge. To say that a Department is to blame but the Minister is not because he does not know what is happening is to prove the impossibility of separating the two. It is a Minister's duty to know what his Department is doing. That is what he is there for.

In the meantime, however, public judgment may be suspended. If the promised statements and representations to the Government reveal the need for further public inquiry it may then be called for. It is not desired to concentrate all attention upon a hunt for scapegoats, but it is necessary that the cause of mistakes, and the authority responsible, should be known if trouble is to be avoided in future. The provision of hospital accommodation is a costly business, and the ratepaying public have not heard the end of it yet. They are entitled to require from their representatives such information and evidence as will give an assurance that future plans and spending will be free from the mistakes of the past. This is the main point to be borne in mind, that the business should be straightened out and the public given a clear view of what is necessary, why it is necessary, what it will cost, and why the costs have mounted.