HOSPITAL POLICY.

Timaru Herald, Volume XCVIII, 18 June 1925, Page 7

HOSPITAL POLICY.

IMPORTANT PROPOSALS. MEDICAL ASSOCIATION'S VIEWS. By Telecranh —K-ess Association. 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. made the following recommendations as an interim report, which had been adopted by the Council of the Association: — , (1) Public hospitals should be so constituted as to be available . for treatment to every member of the community. (2) Patients should be divided into 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 to be a matter between the patient and his medical adviser. (4) The treatment of those patients who voluntarily enter 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 officers, but such patients should make their own arrangements for attention with the doctor of their choice. (Note: It is intended that resident medical officers are to be excluded from acting 'under physicians and surgeons attending the case.) (6) Patients entering pay-in 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 hospital of anyone who is his genuine private patient. (6) Doctors chosen from the profession in the district should be appointed part-time officers of the hospital staff, and adequately paid for services.

(7) In larger hospitals, as far as practicable, wholetime medical superintendents should confine their duties to administration. (8) In the case of smaller hospitals, even if administrative work remains permanently in the hands of one man,; the'medical and surgical work of the public wards of the hospital shall go to registered medical practitioners in the district, who, if they desire, shall attend their own patients in hospital, except such doctors as are found by the central controlling board to he unsuitable. (9) Hospital policy generally, with special reference to the limitation of the number of boards, should be under the control of a Board of Health, or some similarly constituted Central Board. (10) The law should be amended to permit nomination by the Government 1 of appropriate numbers of all Hospital Boards in virtue of the Government subsidising hospital funds. (1)) The Government should subsidise the capital cost of accommodation for paying patients on the same basis as for non-paying patients, or failing that, should advance money at a low rate of interest. (12) 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 Otago University.