PUBLIC HOSPITAL FEES.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXVII, Issue LXXVII, 3 August 1918, Page 2

PUBLIC HOSPITAL FEES.

COMMENTS BY THE JOURNAL

This month's issue of the Jurnal of Public Health (issued by direction of the Minister) gives some hints to hospital boards in regard to persons who try' to shirk payment of accounts for treatment.

"It has been argued that if a person will not pay there is no means to compel him," the Journal comments. "At the conference at Wellington, when the Minister emphatically told the board that they should overhaul their system of collecting patients' payments, it was urged that poor people should not be made to pay, and that the magistrates would not" make them. This 'is beside the point, however, and no on© expects people in distressed circumstances to be dunned and harassed with hospital accounts. In. fact, the amount ot their account should be settled long before this ■stage, and either have been written off or reduced to meet their circumstances. The point we wish to make [is that the account should never be allowed to reach the stage where it devolves on a magistrate to decide as to whether the person shall pay or not. The time to settle this is before the i patient goes into hospital. "A leading medical practitioner, a member of the honorary staff of one of our largest hospitals, expressed himself recently to the effect that 98 per cent, of the people who require treatment (at any rate, a« out-patients) az*e in a position to go into the matter of the charges and enter into an undertaking in regard thereto before admission to the institution, and that 'in serious cases the patient is invariably accompanied by a friend or near relative who is prepared to answer necessary questions. This is the time to deal with the account. A patient who is expecting au operation and in uncertain as to its result is much more likely lo toil the truth about himself and to be willing to pay us much as he can reasonably be expected than after his di.schnrgi.; from lh:> hospital, when his anxieties :i!io;;t In* physical welfare have been allayed.

"The matter of the patient's account having been thoroughly gone into before admission, and the' patient in many cases having lodged for safe custody his cash and valuables with the sec-rotary or other officer, he should at the time of his discharge be interviewed and made to (toe iihe mark' with, regard to his account. It is at this time, and not two or three months after his discharge, that the matter should be settled. in many cases patients -are unable to pay the account in full or even the amount of the account after it has been reduced to meet the needs of their case, and are willing io undertake to pay so much per week or month. In such cases the patient ••hould he "Kept up to such undertaking, ami 'immediately at the ex-

piration of the agreed period, if he fails to pay anything, pressure should be brought to bear upon him. The idea should not be allowed to get about among the public that upon their discharge all that is necessary for them to do !is to make a promise to gay, trusting to the probability of such promise not being enfoz'ced."