CONTROL OF HOSPITALS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3764, 4 May 1926, Page 36

CONTROL OF HOSPITALS.

PRESENT SYSTEM EFFICIENT. STATEMENT BY MINISTER OF HEALTH. HAMILTON, April 26. The Minister of Health (the Hon. J. A. Young) is apparently determined that the control of the New Zealand hospitals shall remain ii| the hands of the people, despite an.y recommendations to the contrary, or influence brought to bear in bringing about an alteration of the present system. When speaking at Huntly the Minister said the Dominiou had recently been visited by an American surgeon who came here at the instance of the New Zealand branch of the British Medical Association to report on the hospitals of the Dominion. •‘We are,” said the Minister, “anxious to learn all w e can from America, or any <4her part of the world, for we are desirous of rendering as efficient service as possible to the public through our hospitals. While, however, desirous of rendering the Icghest possible service we also have to keep ilown the cost of administration as low as possible without impairng efficiency. New Zealand in one respect cannot learn anything from the United States of America, and that is on the important question of fees, for Dr Watt, Assistant-Director of Health in New Zealand, who is at present abroad, only last month wrote from America stating the hospital and medical fees charged tner# were simply appalling. Dr Valintine, who recently returned from (.teat Britain and Europe also reported that British hospitals were the most efficient in the world. In New Zealand the hospitals in every sense are community hospitals. whereas iu America there are very lew controlled by the community in the same sense. ~ ~ _ “My policy shall be, said Mr Young, “to preserve the control of our hospitals in the hand* of the people who are responsible for arranging the finance and organisation of them. W hile I recognise and appreciate the great services rendered by the doctors I consider it would be a serious mistake if the control of our hospitals were to pass into the hands of the medical profession.” Referring to the uses of radium the Minister of Health stated that in his opinion it would not be possible in the hospital at Huntly. In fact, it was not necessary, because every base hospital would have a supply. The four metropolitan hospitals with their stocks of radium would be able to supply more than the needs of New Zealand. CURSE OP NEW ZEALAND SYSTEM. WELLINGTON, April 26. ' “The curse of hospital policy in New Zealand is politics,” says the New Zealand Medical Journal editorially. Polities multiply the number of hospital districts, not in the interest of patients, but for political re-sois. Ministers of the Crown in charge of hospital administration come and go with the turn of the political ■wheel, and they cannot raise the hospital policy out jf the political arena. Can a Minister tackle the solution of a urnform policy of hospita staffing, or are local i,rejudices and predilections to prevail haphazard? What is good for Wanganui cannot he bad for Hamilton. When two systems are diametrically opposed one must be better than the other. Medical men will generally agiee that to place a good hospital of 50 beds or more under the full control of a more or less inexperienced doctor, with the help, perhaps, of a house surgeon, to exclude the services of good experienced men practising in the district, to prevent co-operation and emulation, is to do a grave wrong to the people, some of. them unthinking who go as patients to such a hospital. If the great majority of medical men are wrong in this opinion they are surely entitled to he set ight by the department or the boards or whatever persons are the authors of a system which is condemned in every progressive country in the world. Let this policy be justified or else swept away, but not ignored. Much useful reform of the present hospital system, which is in some ways admirable, can now be effected by the co-operation of the department, the boards, and the medical profession. The new Minister of Health gives promise of progressive ideas. The department has declared itself in favour of innovations of far-reaching effect. Hospital development lias now become a public question, and surely within this year into which we have not very far entered we shall have some practical outcome to all the thought und discussion which have centred upon the hospitals of this country. The members of the medical profession, as experts in the treatment of the sick, will be false to themselves and their traditions if they allow in silence any considerations, political or otherwise, to set a limit to continue progress in hospital as well as in private practice.” MINISTER’S STATEMENT f/ PRESENTED. WELLINGTON, April 27. Dr H. E. Gibbs, Chairman of the Council, of the New Zealand Branch of the British Medical Association, made the following reply to the remarks of the Hon. J. A. Young, Minister of Health, at Huntly: “The executive of the British Medical Association read with regret, and some degree of resentment, the statements of the Minister of Health at Huntly as reported in the press. When we, the Health Department, the hospital boards, and the British Medical Association, are all working together for the betterment and improved service of our hospitals, it is hardly fair or generous, or as a schoolboy would put it ‘not playing cricket,* for the Minister, of all people, to attribute purely selfish and interested motives to one of the parties. The Minister’s remarks that the control of hospitals would remain with the people and that it would be a serious mistake if such control were to pass into the hands of the medical profession assumes that such a condition was the aim and object of the doctors, or would be welcomed by them, whereas we Mpin emphatically assert that neither individually nor collectively do the doctors wire to control the hospitals or their

policy, though the doctors do r eel that, by reason of their intimate relationships with these institutions, they should know something about them, and that their opinions should, therefore, carry some weight and respect. They knew that as good as out hospitals are they could be made better, could be made to serve a wider public, could be run more economically, and could be made of greater educational viilue and service to the medical profession and frem these improvements the public would receive the most benefit. Knowing this, should not the medical profession speak out, and if it does should it not expert the Minister of Health of all people to listen sympathetically to the views expressed instead of excusing and accounting for the taihoa policy and smug complacency that ‘all in the hospital garden is lovely’ by insinuating that the interests of the doctors and the British Medical Association is wholly selfish and with the ulterior object of getting the control of the hospitals? So far is this from being the case that were it at all possible or probable the British Medical Association and the doctors would shrink from the responsibility. “It is not desired to traverse the report of the speech in detail. The covert belittling of the American authority, because it is American, the drawing up of the red herring of appalling fees across the path, when al] know that all the charges in America are appalling to our standards, the ambiguous use of the term community,’ as applied to the hospitals, are to be regretted. But one might point out that the Minister’s reference to British hospitals was particularly unfortunate for his argument as these hospitals a £ e f un J’ ust as is advocated that our should be run—free from political influence and control and by selected boards rather than elected. There, too, the income (from voluntary subscriptions) controls expenditure, but with us the estimates and, therefore the expenditure keep mounting up year by year with no finai,tv in sight.”