HOSPITAL BUILDING POLICY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23154, 28 September 1938, Page 14

HOSPITAL BUILDING POLICY

. Another useful contribution toward the determination of the Hospital Board's building policy has been made in a survey by Dr. It. A. Shore, director of the hospitals division of the Health Department. As board and department must co-operate, the clear statement in some detail of the official view offers valuable guidance at what may be hoped is the penultimate stage, although it is not necessarily completely acceptable. The important thing is that Dr. Shore along with the board has considered future as well as immediate needs and sought to make his recommendations conform to an order of urgency and also fit into a long-range plan. The piecemeal and spasmodic additions that marred the board's past record should thus be avoided, giving place to the objective of a co-ordinated whole, which is to be> progressively realised. By this policy efliciency should join hands with economy and both promote the board's primary business of giving the sick the maximum of service. Sympathy will be felt with the attitude of the board's chairman, Mr. Allan Moody, in the vigour of his expressed earnestness to be out of the wilderness of muddle and "get things done." A long-range plan is emerging from the desert of prolonged and often aimless deliberations and he is eager to complete and apply it. Unfortunately there remains one element of uncertainty and an extremely important one—the effect of the Government's social security scheme on the demand for hospital service and on the board's finances. Mr. Moody and the board should obtain the clearest possible definitions or estimates on these new aspects before finalising their building policy.