SUGGESTED INCREASE IN HOSPITAL FEES

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6807, 10 January 1929, Page 8

SUGGESTED INCREASE IN HOSPITAL FEES

From 9/- to 12/- a Day ALREADY APPLIED BY SOME BOARDS FALLINF OFF OF PAYMENTS. In view of tho increasing cost of hospital service due to recent developments in medical science the question is ever present of the adequacy ot fees charged and the necessity of those able to do ao paying the cost of treatment received. This matter has been considered by the executive of the Hospital Boards association, which has recommended boards to raise their scale of fees from tho usual 9s. a day to 12s. a day, and one or two boards have already done so. This does not, however, approximate the full average cost of hospitals, and as the institutions are no longer confined to the destitute the question of ensuring that the full cost of treatment is recovered from those able to pay is still a matter for consideration.

According to a recently-issued appendix to the Health department’s annual report patients’ payments have now become a not inconsiderable portion of hospital revenue, constituting 20 per cent, of the total revenuo of hospital boards and departmental hospitals, and they have shown a very much greater proportionate increase than hospital expenditure. During the year ended March 31 last tho amount received per occupied bed in the general hosiptals controlled by hospital boards showed a slight increase, averaging £64.9 per annum, as against £63.7 in 1926-27. The average, however, for all hospitals and sanatoria administered by hospitals dropped from £67.6 to £65.3, while tho fees received by the department’s institutions dropped from £162 to £159.6. The average of all hospitals, both board and departmental, dropped from £77 to £74.1. These figures include amounts paid between ono board and another, or by tho boards to tbe department, which in the case of the department's sanatoria constitute practically all the fees, although tho boards recover, of course, as much as they can from the patients for whose fees they are responsible. Fees of all descriptions received by hospital boards during the year, ineluding payments for inmates in chantable institutions (derivable, chiefly from old-age pensions), district nursing and other fees, and excluding fees received from other boards or from the governments, amounted to £382,218, as against £393,835 in 1926-27. Tins 5s about tho same Tatio in regard to the occupied beds as given above, and shows that the proportionate decrease must be looked for rather m the amount paid' by patients themselves than in decrease from fees from other sources.