EXPENDITURE ON N.Z. HOSPITALS: HEALTH DEPARTMENT REVIEW

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 September 1950, Page 8

EXPENDITURE ON N.Z. HOSPITALS: HEALTH DEPARTMENT REVIEW

WELLINGTON, Sept. 28 (P.A.). —Capital expenditure by all hospital boards is being reviewed by the Health Department. In the department’s annual report, tabled in the House of Representatives today, the Director of the Hospitals Division (Dr C. A. Taylor) says that the expenditure of £8,500,000 a year for maintenance and £1,000,000 for capital purposes of hospitals represents a heavy demand on a relatively small population. “The increasing expenditure on public hospitals is of particular concern,” says Dr Taylor. “Sketch plans are being prepared for £4,100,000 worth of hospital buildings, and another £4,500,000 is involved in other hospital construction, for which drawings are being prepared.” Dr Taylor says that: the list of proposals for which consent has been obtained is being steadily augmented. For 1949-50, consents issued for buildings involved an estimated cost of £1,400,000. Beyond that total is a list of projects involving about £20,000,000. Some of these projects are absolutely essential, and most of them unquestionably desirable, but impossible of completion for many years. The Hospitals Division has now begun a survey of the activities of all hospitals, in order to differentiate between projects that are absolutely essential and urgent, and those which may be described as “ideal.”