King Country Chronicle. Friday, June 23, 1939. HOSPITAL BENEFITS AND THE RATEPAYER.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4801, 23 June 1939, Page 4

King Country Chronicle. Friday, June 23, 1939. HOSPITAL BENEFITS AND THE RATEPAYER.

The definite announcement that the Social Security hospital benefits are to become operative on and after July 1 raises the inevitable question as to what effect this is going to have upon the hospital levy, a burden which has increased enormously in recent years. Under the regulations which have been made, payments from the fund in respect to hospital maintenance and treatment are to be made at the rate of six shillings a day, such payment to be made direct to those controlling the hospitals. In accordance with the act payment from the fund to hospital boards will relieve the patient from all charges in respect of maintenance and treatment in hospital board institutions. This apparently means that this six shillings will replace the patients fees, which in the case of the local hospital authority, the Waikato Hospital Board, amounted last year to £37,786, or an average of £76 12s per occupied bed. When the six shillings a week becomes payable, it appears that, if the computation is to be on the same

basis, £lO9 10s will be received for each occupied bed. That this will be the case, of course, cannot be decided without a fuller knowledge of the basis of payment. At present the only definite knowledge of the scope of public hospital treatment is in the statement that the act empowers the Minister to decide whether any treatment afforded in or at a hospital is or is not hospital treatment for the purposes of benefit, but the general intention is that hospital treatment shall embrace actual medical and surgical treatment, as well as isolation under medical supervision and medical observation. No provision is in the meantime to be made for out-patients. There is another question for consideration—what effect is the Social Security legislation going to have on hospital accommodation? The total maintenance cost of the Waikato Board’s hospitals was last year £164 10s per occupied bed, a very low figure compared with most other hospitals and one which must increase greatly during the current year, for which an increase in the net requirement of no less than 49.18 per cent, has been estimated. The loss per patient must be multiplied by the increase in the number of admissions that will be made to hospitals under the new scheme, and a little over half this loss must come from the ratepayers. This may easily wipe out any increase in patients’ revenue accruing from the new act. Then there is the question of available accommodation to consider. The huge increase in the number of those who will be requiring hospital admission, an increase aggravated by the fact that free medical practitioner service is not yet available, must inevitably result in an orgy of hospital building, which will also reflect adversely upon the ratepayer’s pocket. The usual thing is for capital works to be met by levy and subsidy in equal amounts, and where expenditure is very heavy resort is made to loans.