PUBLIC HOSPITALS.

Taranaki Daily News, 18 June 1925, Page 8

PUBLIC HOSPITALS.

DOCTORS WANT REFORMS. FEES SOUGHT.FROM PATIENTS. ADMISSION OF ALL DOCTORS, B/ Telegr&ofa.—Prow As»ocUtloa. Wellington, June 17. The Director-'General of Health, in announcing the new hospital policy put forward by the Health Department, asked for the views of the medical profession. The New Zealand branch of the B.M.A. has made the folowing recommendations as an interim report, which has been adopted by the council of the association. 1. Public hospitals should be so constituted as to be available for the treatment of every member of the community. 2. Patients should be divided into three classes, (a) those unable to pay anything, (b) those able to pay for maintenance, (c) those able to pay for medical attention as well as maintenance. 3. As regards paying patients the fee ought to be a matter between the patient and his medical adviser. CHOICE OF DOCTORS. 4. Treatment of those patients who voluntarily enter the private wards of a hospital and those who are deemed by the secretary to be in a position to pay private fees over and above maintenance, should not be under the medical and surgical control of the resident medical officer, bitt such patients should make their own arrangements for attendance with the doctor of their choice. Note: It is not intended that resident medical officers are to be excluded from acting under the physicians and surgeons attending the case. 5. Patients entering paying wards should not be attended by the stipendiary staff of the hospital, but by the medical adviser of their own choice. Nothing in this clause is to prevent a part-time stipendiary surgeon or physician from being responsible for the treatment in the hospital of anyone who is his genuine private patient. fl. Doctors chosen from the profession in the district should be appointed part-time officers of the hospital stall and adequately paid for their services. 7. In the larger hospitals, as far as practicable, the whole-time medical superintendents should confine their duties to administration. OUTSIDE DOCTORS. 8. In the case of smaller hospitals, even if the administration work remains permanently in the hands of one man, the medical and surgical work of the public wares of the hospital shall go to registered practitioners in the district who, if they desire, shall attend their own patients in the hospital, except such doctors as are found by the central controlling body to ’be unsuitable. 9. The hospital policy generally, with special reference to the limitation of the number of boards, should be under the control of the Board of Health, or some similarly constituted central board. 10. The law should -be amended to permit the nomination by the Government of an appropriate number of members tor all hospital boards in virtue of the Government sudsidising hospital funds. 11. The Government should subsidise the capital cost of accommodation for paying patients or, failing that, advance money at a low rate of interest. 12. That the work of hospital boards should be divorced from charitable aid administration, to enable hospital boards to concentrate on hospital administration. 13. Some modification may be required in connection with the Dunedin Hospital, as being an integral part of the medical school of the Otago University.