STATE BLAMED

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22618, 22 April 1948, Page 6

STATE BLAMED

HOSPITAL COSTS RISE BOARDS DEFENDED MORE CONTROL NEEDED (P.A.) TIMARU. April 21. The question of hospital board finance was one of difficulty and concern to all hospital boards, but it should be borne in mind that they were not responsible for the increase, said the secretary of the South Canterbury Hospital Board, Mr. H- G. Naylor, in a report to a meeting of the board yesterday. “We are simply carrying out the policy of the Government which is the primary cause of the Dominion’s expenditure increasing from £2,567,888 in 1937-38 to something well over £6.000,000 last year,” said Mr. Naylor. The boards were as anxious as the Government and the Department of Health to exercise careful control over the funds made available, and he was satisfied that this could be accomplished not by taking away authority and responsibility but by a continuance of the confidence shown by the Government in the past in the ability and the capacity of elected boards faithfully to carry out their functions in respect of all classes. Mr. Naylor suggested that if periodical round-table conferences were held between the Minister and departmental officials on the one hand, and the board chairman and the chief executive officers on the other, it would tend to promote better co-operation and more sympathetic understanding of the many difficult problems which were continually arising. “It may also result in the restoration of the boards to their former status which, I believe, would be in the best interests of all concerned,” he added.