“VERY SERIOUS PROBLEM”

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 10 December 1940, Page 6

“VERY SERIOUS PROBLEM”

HOSPITAL OVERCROWDED RETIRING SUPERINTENDENT’S REPORT THE WELLINGTON POSITION (United Press Association] WELLINGTON, This Day. A report to the Hospital Board by the retiring Superintendent, Dr. A. R. i Thorne, draws attention to serious i overcrowding and lack of progress durI ing six years of planning. He gave I figures showing that every ward was 1 overcrowded. The board, he said, was up against a very serious problem which had been allowed to develop for years in spite of many warnings. Any further delay in dealing with the deficiency in beds would end in disaster.

The total average of patients being aealt with at Wellington Hospital six years ago was 580. The daily average last month was 1931. In 1934 waiting lists were comparatively small except in one section To-day there were no less than 1138 patients on the waiting list. Twelve months ago it was 741. Dr. Thorne reviews the effect of many temporary remedial measures adopted over the past six years, the use of the old Newtown school, a building subject to protests both by the City Council and Fire Board, to carry over the winter, and certain other nearby accommodation outside the hospital itself, and comments on Us inadequacy and ineffectiveness. He says that beds in the Public Works Department ward, now under construction, and the Hutt Valley Hospital, the foundations of which were hardly started, would only cope with the military needs and the equivalent of the; waiting list requirements. That meant that the present overcrowding would become even worse unless more wards were provided within the next few months. The main hospital and improvised accommodation had to carry a daily average of 198 more patients than the maximum. Normal occupancy should only be 80 to 85 per cent, of the total beds. Available figures for September were, normal beds 352, plus verandahs 62, total 414; daily average 612, highest occupancy 683. The excess was not due to military cases, the daily average for these being under 30 and more than offset by the daily average of medical cases housed at the infectious diseases hospital and not shown in the tables quoted. In the children’s hospital the daily average was 94. with a normal accommodation for 64. Ninety-four was by no means the peak figure, which was 134.