Hospital Has Been Taxed to Capacity

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 640, 17 April 1929, Page 18

Hospital Has Been Taxed to Capacity

SUPERINTENDENT’S REPORT OFTEN NO ROOM FOR URGENTS The hospital had at times been taxed to its utmost capacity, and it was sometimes a difficult matter to find beds for urgent cases. 'J’HIS was disclosed in the annual report of the medical superintendent, Dr. C. E. Maguire, at the meeting of the Hospital Board yesterday. The total number of patients admitted to the Auckland Hospital for the year ending March 31, 1929, was 9,115. This was an increase of 404 over the previous year’s total. The average individual days’ stay in the hospital was 24. The medical superintendent remarks that this was too high, and accounts for it by the number of long standing orthopaedic cases and patients who in the first place should have been admitted to the infirmary. It was very often some considerable time before such patients could be transferred to the infirmary, owing to want of accommodation there. The average number of beds occupied a day during the year was 642, and the largest number of patients in hospital in one day was 710. The previous year’s figures were 622. The casualty department was very cramped for room, and patients waiting for treatment overflowed into the passages. Dr. Maguire stated that this would never be obviated till the hospital had a properly equipped outpatient department in an administrative block. Other statistics are as follow: Deaths, 546; coronsr’s inquests, 59: operations, 7,924.