HALF-MILLION HEALING UNITS.

Matamata Record, Volume XVI, Issue 1447, 3 August 1933, Page 4

HALF-MILLION HEALING UNITS.

rHE cost per bed of an economic-ally-built general hospital seems to | be roughly comparable with the cost j per room of a first-class hotel. This j statement is on the authority of Mr. , Robert Atkinson as reported in The j Listener, and applies to modern • building in English conditions. He states that the most economical size for a general hospital is GOO to 1000 beds, costing, “if cheaply constructed,” £BOO to £IOOO per bed, “but usually much more”; while “aj first-class hotel with a bath to every bedroom costs £IOOO per room.” | Such a general hospital means there--1 fore an expenditure of at least half a million, without counting the cost of the site. The alarming thing is that, whereas a first-class hotel is. a private responsibility built to pay its way, a hospital is a public responsibility that generally does not. pay its way. How many half-million hospitals can the public of any country afford in the present state of over-indebtedness, and with the

progressive inci’ease in street accidents resulting from speed traffic? In English conditions Mr. Atkinson expects rapid evolution from the one-storey straggling hospital to the many-storeyed type, and instances a new six-seven storeyed block in Birmingham. “ Vertical concentration ” gets rid of “wasteful horizontal expansion,” . The structure and the floors should be permanent, with “ internal reconstruction ever y twenty years ” to meet scientific change. An instance of the latter is radiological equipment. Hospital provision is only one section of the community burden, yet in itself ip sufficient to challenge the whole theory that unlimited public debt can be handed down to posterity. Even if there had been no war, that theory was piling up accounts that must sooner or later have 'challenged its validity.