HOSPITAL FINANCE

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 7024, 12 January 1910, Page 4

HOSPITAL FINANCE

It is quite dear that the chairman of the Wellington Hospital Trustees has altogether mistaken the puqrort of tho criticism passed during the last few weeks upon the management of New Zealand hospitals in relation to the payments made by patients for the treatment they received. Mr Luke seems to he under the impression that imputations of personal inefficiency have been made against officials and members of 'the controlling bodies. So far as we have followed tho comments of the newspapers generally wo believe that tins view of what they have had to say is erroneous. It most certainly is so far as tho “ New Zealand Times ” is concerned. Tho strictures passed have not been upon individuals at all but upon the system which allows such results to Ire shown. The naked fact in connection with Wellington Hospital—and practically the same remark applies to all other hospitals—is that the cost of the institution was last year £23,000; to' wards this the patients contributed £3500 and the taxpayer tho remainder. Tho cost of maintaining an inmate is about 6s a day. , The amount the inmates pay is about tonpence. Now, this result might bo looked for if New Zealand had a large pauper population, and if tho patients treated belonged wholly to the poorest class of workers. But neither of these contingencies are facts, and it is idle for Mr Luke to assume a tone of superior wisdom, and when people protest that this wholesale evasion of obligation by hospital patients is a gross scandal, tell thorn' they “know nothing of hospital administration.” Thoir knowledge is of pounds, shillings and pence, and of tho enormous charge hospital maintenance imposes upon the community in consequence of the system being unable to recover to itself a respectable proportion of the outlay upon those who benefit therefrom. No one supposes 1 the hospitals , should ho self-supporting, nor requires an irrelevant reminder that such a theory would be “ utter nonsense.” There is a wide difference, however, between expecting a hospital to maintain itself and saying that, the system which reveals five out of every sis patients in New Zealand to be paupers is badly in need of readjustment. Wo are quite rea'dy to give unstinted praise to those* gentlemen who undertake voluntary service on the managing boards, but, really, when they claim in the face of a horrible annual deficit to know all there is to ho known about hospital administration the taxpayer is to bo excused for dubiety on tho point. ■ Large deficits are tangible tilings, and when, they are so general as in connection with our hospitals the conclusion is inevitable that the leak of public funds is .caused by systematic, deliberate dodging of debts due to the community.