THE HOSPITAL SYSTEM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22022, 3 August 1933, Page 8

THE HOSPITAL SYSTEM

From the bare intimation that the purpose of the visit to New Zealand of Mr G. Fitzpatrick, Superintendent of the New South Wales Community Hospital, is to confer with the Government of this Dominion in regard to a plan for raising revenue for hospitals the inference might pardonably have been drawn that the proposals would be likely to have some reference to a sweep-stake scheme. In New South Wales the gambling in tinct of the public , has beer freely exploited as a means of securing funds for hospital purposes, and the name of the Community Hospital in that Slate is at

present associated with an art union that is to be drawn at an early date. But the purpose of Mr Fitzpatrick’s visit has been stated in terms that should be sufficiently reassuring. It is not to stir up the Government of New Zealand to emulate such methods in providing for the finance of the public hospitals as are practised in New South Wales. According to what he has said, disillusionment has come to that State in respect of the reliance that can be placed upon lottery profits for the meeting of hospital costs, and a very heavy prospective financial shortage is in view. The Government of New South Wales is now apparently persuaded that the community system is “the one real method of financing hospitals,” and it is to be gathered that the object of Mr Fitzpatrick’s visit is to discuss with the New Zealand Government a joint plan for raising hospital revenue which has some close connection with the community hospital system. Until the nature of the proposals or overtures is made known all this is a little mysterious, and there is room for speculation as to what mutual advantage the Governments of New South Wales and New Zealand may hope to derive from putting their heads together in this matter. Apart, however, from any novelty that may attach to the visit in these circumstances of an emissary from New South Wales, information regarding the working of the community hospital in Sydney must be of considerable interest in New Zealand. The Health Department will no doubt be ready to give an attentive ear to Mr Fitzpatrick’s representations concerning the advantages attendant on the adoption of that type of hospital. The general merits of the community hospital, the distinctive feature of which is the provision of pay-wards, have been expounded to the New Zealand public with some earnestness in the past, and have always appeared to us to be considerable enough to entitle the plan to support. The attitude of the Health Department on the subject has been cautious, but the trend of its opinion, so far as it has been expressed, has been in favour of a change in the existing system that would cater for patients who would be prepared to pay for treatment in special wards. The departmental view in the past has also been that the fees would have to be based on a scale that would prevent any of the cost, either capital or maintenance, from falling on the public funds. What fresh argument Mr Fitzpatrick may be able to adduce that may be calculated to persuade the New Zealand Government that the time is opportune for turning the State hospitals of this country into community hospitals can only be a matter of conjecture in the meantime. The suggestion will probably be heard that the moment is not opportune for any innovation that would render the taxpayer apprehensive, especially ( as there has not been what might be called a public demand for the adoption of the community hospital plan in this country. But public apathy or even opposition in certain quarters, some of it based on misconceptions, or on grounds of a more or less trivial kind, constitutes no reason why the merits of the community hospital system should not receive due consideration, or .why proposals for its adoption should he indefinitely shelved if they can be shown, as we believe they can, to b'e both practicable and advantageous.