MEDICAL SERVICES

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 233, 30 August 1935, Page 2

MEDICAL SERVICES

AUSTRALIA AND DOMINION. PRAISE FROM OVERSEAS. Notable tributes to the standard of surgery in Australia and New Zealand ana also to the efficiency of the nursing and medical services in these countries were contained in a report presented by Dr. D. C. Balfour to a recent meeting of the general staff of the famous Mayo clinic, in the United States. Dr Balfour attended the opening in Melbourne in March of the new building of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, and afterwards spent a mouth travelling in Australia and New Zealand. Speaking of the demonstrations which he saw given in Melbourne, Dr Balfour said that “the character of the surgery and demonstrations gave evidence that the surgeons of Australia and New Zealand are great travellers, and are thoroughly familiar with clinics in other parts of the world. The surgery which we saw in Australia and New Zealand was characteised by keen clinical judgment, a high regard for the welfare of the patient, a thoroughness of investigation and, above all, a desire to know the truth. Medical visitors to these countries, therefore, will be well repaid, not only because of the high general excellence of practice there, but because of the outstanding work of many of their individual surgeons. EFFICIENCY OF HOSPITALS. “Wo found in even the smaller communities,” continued Dr. Balfour, “that the hospitals were of the highest standard and the nursing and medical services so well organised and so efficient that it is doubtful if anywhere in the world the average patient secures better care than in New Zealand and in Australia. Much of this is duo to the fact that honorary staffs in the public hospitals are appointed on merit, which means the work in those hospitals is carried on by men of superior training and ability. Furthermore, such hospitals have a fulltime pathologist, roentgenologist, anaesthetist and every laboratory facility for making available to'the patient all that modern medicine offers. “Because of this the problem of the private hospital in these countries of relatively small population becomes an increasingly difficult one, since as yet there has been found no way of denying to the well-to-do patient the privilege of free service in these public hospitals in which the staff is not permitted to charge any fee for services, regardless of the circumstances of the patient, or even when the patient has been awarded large compensation in insurance cases. TWO POSSIBLE COURSES. “The late Dr. Franklin H. Martin, in commenting on this situation in 1924, predicted that the people and profession of New Zealand and Australia would do one of two things, ‘either they will allow their general hospitals to degenerate into purely pauper institutions by encouraging the building of more comprehensive private hospitals, or they will do what would be much more advantageous, combine with their large and expensive equipments of general hospitals pavilions equipped to care for patients of means, who may pay them not only for their hospital treatment, but also for the professional services which they receive from their physicians oi specialists.’ . “The economic changes m these intervening years have not made the solution of this problem an easier one, but it is probable that English-speak-ing races may again be indebted to New Zealand and Australia for finding a way to correct these inconsistencies.”