PATIENT ASKS FOR INQUIRY

Northern Advocate, 9 March 1936, Page 4

PATIENT ASKS FOR INQUIRY

ALLEGED TREATMENT AT HOSPITAL

REQUEST DECLINED BY BOARD

The Whangarei Hospital Board this morning declined a request . from a patient, Mr. W. H. Bridges, that a careful inquiry be made into the treatment which he alleged he had received in the institution. He claimed that he had entered the hospital with the intention of obtaining a transfer to Auckland Hospital, and that the medical superintendent had not carried on with the treatment prescribed by an Auckland specialist. “I wish to bring before your notice the treatment I received while a patient in the Whangarei Hospital,” the patient wrote. “I made arrangements to go into the hospital with the intention that I was to be transferred to the Auckland Hospital. I had been under an Auckland, specialist, Who had advised me by telephone to do this. I was more than disappointed at the attitude that Dr. Hall took on my arrival as a patient for this purpose, and apparently he wished me to stay in the hospital as I was an exceptional case, thinking he dould make a cure. “I, fading under the Auckland specialist, took the prescription to the Whangarei Hospital, thinking the superintendent there would, carry on the same, but instead of doing so he tried other remedies of his " own, which have made my complaint in a terrible state. During my ten days’ stay in the hospital I was in absolute agony, the only relief I got being when I was under drugs for sleeping. I can safely say that I was tortured for ten days.” i Inquiry Asked Fbr,. !

The patient maintained that had Dr; Hall used the treatment that he had been having, he would not have been in the state he now claimed he was in, and he asked for a careful inquiry into this matter. Hfe said that he did not go into the Whangarei Hospital for treatment, his reason for going

there being to be transferred to Auckland and he failed to understand why Dr. Hall had refused to use the treatment prescribed by the Auckland specialist. He was too " ill to travel when the transfer-was arranged, arid was now confined to his bed.

In a .report to the board, Dr. Hall said the patient was admitted 'on February 4 with an acute eczema presenting no special features., He was discharged on February 17,, improved and fit to travel. He was given a transfer to Auckland Hospital on no further merit than that of persistent discontent. ' History of Case. The chairman, Mr j. A. S. Mackay, said that the wife of the patient rang him after her husband had been in hospital for three or four days and complained that she did not want him to be kept there. He had 1 been sent on the advice of a local doctor, with, the purpose of having him transferred to the Auckland Hospital. However, Dr. Hall was under the impression that the man could be treated at Whangarei. Mr. Mac Kay said that when he, saw the man he said he was no f better, but on a second occasion, eight days later, the patient said he was certainly much better, but

he still wanted to go to Auck- ‘ land. His wife agreed to pay four weeks in advance, if he was sent to Auckland. , . t The chairman said that there was no objection to anyone going to Auckland at any time, and there was no objection to a transfer when the fees were guaranteed. The patient’s wife said’ they could pay. The man came out of Whangarei Hospital, and Mr Mac Kay said he saw the man’s wife on the Sunday following. She told him her husband was leaving for Auckland in his own c3r. On Monday she said he was going by train. A few days later Mr Mac Kay said he heard that the patient had not left, but was still at home. /

Mr,- Mac Kay said there had been no delay after the transfer had been arranged. The man seemed to have come to the Whangarei Hospital for no other purpose than that of securing a transfer to Auckland Hospital. That gave the Whangarei Hospital no chance and was making a convenience of the institution. Mr F. Elliott said it seemed-to him that the patient had come into the hospital with his mind made Up’that the Auckland treatment was better. In that case he should have gone to Auckland in the first place. Also, the statements made in the letter Were contradictory to those made to the chairtnan.

“feeling Better.”

The chairman: “He told me on the Sunday that he was feeling better*.” Mr. Mac Kay said he did not know what the board could have done. The patient could have gone to , Auckland at any time, except that the Whangarei board would not have sent him until financial arrangements had been made, for the reason that Dr. Hall did not think that the case was one which could not be treated in Whangarei. • The Whangarei board only sent to Auckland and guaranteed the fees, cases which, in the opinion of the medical superintendent, could not be treated here. At the same time, there was no objection to patients leaving and paying their own way. Mr. J. G. Barclay said that the board could not expect to -have no complaints from the hundreds of cases treated, but to ask for an inquiry was going a long way. For an inquiry to be heard, it would have to be a very special case. This did not seem to be so.

Mr. F. Higginson: “We should point out that it is not our policy to admit patients just to transfer them to Auckland, till the medical superintendent is satisfied that he cannot benefit them.” -

Mr. Higginson moved that the board approve of the superintendent’s action. “We are not to be made a transferring home,” he said. The motion was carried.