HOSPITAL LOANS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 31, 6 February 1945, Page 7

HOSPITAL LOANS

WAR BUILDING COSTS

COUNCIL REAFFIRMS STAND

"Is this the end?" asked a councillor at the meeting of the City Council yesterday afternoon on reception of notification from the Hospital Board regarding intention to raise further loans of £139,000 for the Hutt Hospital and £33,000 for completion of the 210-bed block at the main Hospital. "No," replied Councillor F. W. Furkert, who is also a member of the Hospital Board; the calls upon the board were likely to increase, not decrease, with the ageing population which, appeared to be ahead in New Zealand, and with the changed condithms which led to hospitalisation in place of home nursing. It might be a very bad outlook, but that was the position.

Councillor J. D. Sievwright described hospital boards as the greatest plunderers of a special section of the public—the ratepayers—and held that there could be no relief until the whole cost was snouldered by the Government.

The Mayor (Mr. Appleton) said that he would not accept the remark about plunderers, and it was withdrawn. HEADACHES AND HEARTACHES.

Mrs. Gilmer, a member of the Hospital' Board, said that there was not

a patient in Wellington Hospital who had not been admitted upon a medical certificate. The interests of ratepayers had been very fully considered, and the chairman and board

were very greatly concerned about costs: there certainly had been no ex<travagance.

She agreed with Councillor Furkert that the loans now to be applied for could not be the finish, for many improvements had to be made. Considerable rebuilding was necessary at the fever hospital, and the children's hospital was far from satisfactory. Most of the main buildings were 60 years old and maintenance was very heavy; laundry equipment was out of date. Overcrowding in the Ewart Hospital was appalling and a new tuberculosis hospital at Paekakariki was essential.

"Believe me, work' on the Hospital Board means many headaches and heartaches," she said. "If patients come along we have to take care of them, and there is not a patient in Wellington Hospital who was not admitted except on a medical certificate." Councillor M. Fraser agreed that hospital needs must be met, but he maintained that on every occasion the City Council should enter a protest on behalf of the ratepayers, that the rate should be limited, and that expenditure above the figures so fixed should be found from State funds. Not all patients treated in hospitals were ratepayers, and non-ratepayers should contribute in another manner. The Mayor said that the council's remit had been carried at the Municipal Conference, and he agreed that the council should continue to make repreasntations. The time had come when a limit should be fixed for hospital rating and requirements above that limit met from national funds. HIGHER DEMANDS UPON WELLINGTON.

Wellington, because of its position and the completeness of hospital equipment, had more than a fair share of sick people to look after. It was no use blaming the Hospital Board, for it . was doing the very best that it could under most difficult conditions. What those conditions were, he knew, from a period of service on the board and as a hospital visitor, and he would suggest that councillors who did not know the hospital should themselves pay a visit to- see for themselves the conditions under which the staff worked. The present policy of decentralisation, in the opening of the Hutt and Silverstream Hospitals, he thought right.

On the motion of Councillor Macanster, it was decided that the council s views should be stated to a select committee of the House which as ; to inquire into questions of hospiial finance and administration. Councillor Gaudin remarked that when critics discussed hospital expenditure they should remember that the greater demands upon the hospital had come at a time when building costs and costs of equipment and services were double anil treble what they had been pre-war; there was, too hope of. some relief in lower costs in various directions when emergency conditions passed.