HOSPITAL FINANCE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20536, 11 October 1928, Page 10

HOSPITAL FINANCE.

PROBLEM IN SYDNEY. QUEENSLAND’S LOTTERY SCHEME. (Feoji Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, October 4. Despite constant talk of reform, Sydney seems impotent to deal effectively with its public hospital problem, which is daily becoming more acute. An illustration of it is the tragic and poignant position of one of the largest and best known of these hospitals, Royal Prince Alfred, as revealed a day or two ago by those charged with its control. The fact that people are flooding it with applications from all parts of Australia and New Zealand for cancer treatment, in the new department which it has established under the Federal Government’s scheme, makes the position worse. With vast commitments, and going back at the rate of £20,000 a year, it has a bigger army of sufferers waiting for admission than ever it can hope to accommodate. At its wits’ end, the hospital has to make improvised beds out of couches ordinarily used for convalescent patients, when, as is always the case, its 53 ‘ beds are fully occupied. Of 400 people awaiting admission to-day, 100 are inoperable cancer cases. The fact is officially admitted that, not long ago, four convalescent patients had to he removed from their beds at 3 o’clock in the morning to make room for the victims of a had motor smash. If it is a simple case of the removal of tonsils, for example, one has to wait two or three months for admission. The clear-cut fact is that Sydney to-day has not sufficient public hospital accommodation for its needs. Although the Government has sternly set its face against the idea, for fear obviously of offending the church, there arc many in the community who still think that it ought to run a lottery, along the lines of the Queensland “Golden Casket ” scheme, (o help to relieve the position, and at the same time keep within the State, for a great humanitarian service, a vast sum of money that now pours out of it and into the Temple of Chance.