HOSPITALS AND ASYLUMS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9103, 11 July 1888, Page 5

HOSPITALS AND ASYLUMS.

♦ DR. MACGREGOR'S REPORT. DISTRIBUTION OF CHARITABLE AID. EXTRAORDINARY DISCLOSURES. LAVISH WASTE OF PUBLIC MONEY. [B\T telegraph.—special correspondent.] Wellington, Tuesday. The Inspector-General of Hospitals and Asylums (Dr. Macgregor) has furnished this year an able and exhaustive report on the above institutions, and the mode of distributing charitable relief throughout the colony, which will well repay perusal, showing, as it does, different modes of '■■ affording relief, and the mass of imposition which, for the most part, is obtaining assistance instead of the deserving and struggling poor. Speaking iof the Thames Hospital, he says —" The Thames Hospital is a separate institution under the Act. Dr. Williams, the surgeon, receives a salary of £500 a year and a house, without the right of private practice. The head nurse gets £50, four nurses get £40 each, a cook, laundress, and an old patient who acts as gardener, complete the staff, which cost last year £868 6s 4d in salaries alone. The total expenditure for the year was £2210 15s 7d, from which must be deducted £317 17s Id for relief and buildings, leaving £1024 12s 2d for supplies, and of this the drug bill amounted to £160 18s Bd. At the time of my visit there were 10 patients in the Hospital, but it must be added that at times this number is increased considerably. The mere juxtaposition of these figures for salaries and supplies, reveals a most extraordinary state of things, the explanation of which is to be found in the fact that the trustees have thrown open the outdoor department of the Hospital to all persons whatsoever, whether rich or poor, who are willing to pay 5s per week for advice and medicine. The result is that the general body of the taxpayers of the colony have, through the Govern' tat subsidy, to contribute towards giving c!*BS,p medical advice to the Thames people, by enabling the trustees to undersell the local medical men by the competition of a salaried officer, and by the same means towards injuring the druggists, and undermining the self-respect of the people. During 1887 there were treated on these terms 1339 individual patients, with 3357 attendances. I am informed that in order to leave Dr. Williams free to overtake this rapidly increasing demand for his services on . these terms the trustees desire to relieve him of all charitable aid work, which they want the local doctors, whom they are starving out, to undertake. I have singled out this hospital simply to illustrate a tendency that pervades the whole hospital system of the colony in a, more or less marked degree." Referring to the Auckland Hospital, the Inspector-General says : —" This Hospital, after a long period of strife, has entered on what I trust will long continue to be a peaceful course of public usefulness. The new Board, by appointing Drs. Lindsay and Bell have secured most trustworthy and capable officers, and the condition of the Hospital in all its parts is most satisfactory. Speaking on charitable aid in Auckland, he remarks :—" As many as a hundred persons were struck off the list shortly after my visit, and the determination with which the Board performed their arduous and unpleasant duties resulted in a very marked diminution of this mischievous expenditure of public moneys. During the quarter ending on the 31st December last, the amount expended in outdoor relief in Auckland and suburbs was £467 lis sd, whereas in the corresponding period of 1886, when the times were better and the struggle for a living less severe, the amount was £842 18s lid, equal to a decrease of £375 7s 4d. On my way home from Auckland I found that a still worse state of things existed at Napier, and at my last visit I was glad to see that the expenditure had been reduced by about 50 cent." The illustrations the Inspector gives of the action of charitable aid boards, benevolent societies, etc., would Kjeni incredible, were the details not circui*stantially given of the manner in which the authorities are victimised, and the honest poor defrauded.