HOSPITAL SYSTEM.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 260, 1 October 1936, Page 15

HOSPITAL SYSTEM.

TRENDS OVERSEAS. SIR JAMILS BARRETT’S VIEWS. AUCKLAND, Sept. 30. Important recent developments overseas in public health and hospital administration were discussed by Sir James Barrett, the noted Melbourne eye and ear specialist, who is returning to Australia by the Aorangi after retiring from the position of president of the British Medical Association at the 104th annual meeting in England. The outstanding movement in the hospital sphere, said Sir James, was the development in America of a system similar to that adopted by the Victorian Bush Nursing Association, of which he is honorary secretary. The fundamental fact had been recognised that some form of hospital insurance! was essential, since the average man could not pay full hospital and medical fees. It had been realised that this applied to the middle classes as well as poorer people whose hospital fees would be dealt with by charitable organisations. The system developed was not connected with charity. People paid an annual sum. 36s or more, and in return were guaranteed hospital service if necessary for a specified period during the year and made their own arrangements for the attendance of their own medical practitioner. The scheme had grown to such proportions that 270,000 beds were maintained in this way in America. EXAMPLE IN CANADA. Sir James was very impressed by the way in which the introduction of a health insurance system was being tackled in British Columbia, and considered the methods being adopted could be watched with advantage by other countries contemplating such a step. The medical profession was urging that the scheme should be nonpolitical and that there should be no cash payments to the sick person. He should be provided with proper medical attention, but iiis lack of employment should he dealt with under a separate unemployment scheme, and certification for tliis should he by a medical officer not in practice, on whom pressure could not he brought to hear. The most objectionable part of the system in other countries had been found to be that cash payments were made to a patient on the certificate of a medical practitioner. Commenting on British hospitals, Sir James said there was a growing feeling that the system must be modified. It was generally held that the general practitioner, who was the backbone of the profession, must he associated in some way with hospitals, so that when his case went into one he did not lose sight of it altogether. 11 had become plain that the two greatest systems, the voluntary hospitals, which had been the glory of English medicine, in which the staffs wore honorary, and the hospitals maintained by county councils with paid staffs, could not run alongside each other indefinitely without modification.