ABUSE OF THE HOSPITAL SYSTEM.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18452, 1 May 1928, Page 8

ABUSE OF THE HOSPITAL SYSTEM.

ii T~>ATIENTS often get free services under false pretences,” says a medical man, in discussing the rumour that public hospitals may be obliged to rely on stipendiary rather than honorary staffs in the near future. Such a change would be most regrettable from the point of view of poor people, but it is almost inevitable under a hospital system that pretends to be one thing and is really another. Dr Mayo, the eminent American surgeon, predicted that unless the system provided for paying wards, the hospitals would tend to become pauper institutions, and that is the direction in which they would drift under stipendiary staffs. Their inability to engage, the most highly skilled specialists would deprive their patients of services now given for nothing by the city’s leading medical men, and this would be followed by a heavy run on private hospitals, not only by those well-to-do people who arc now abusing the general hospital system, but, also, it is sadly true, by many poor people who would make a heroic effort to command the same standard of medical attention as they had been sure of previously under the honorary staffs of the public hospitals. This abandonmenl of the general hospitals by all who could afford to obtain treatment elsewhere would intensify the already growing opposition to hospital expenditure, and bring the institutions within measurable distance of that undesirable state of affairs predicted by Dr Mayo. These arc considerations that are almost certain to be placed before the Minister of Health by the deputation appointed by the recent conference of the British Medical Association. The resentment of doctors against the abuse of the hospital system has some relationship to the growing public uneasiness over ever-increasing hospital expenditure, and the time is opportune for a review of the whole system. We feel sure that if the paying ward or community system were understood and appreciated, it would offer the best solution of a difficult problem from the point of view of all classes of the community, and wouhj, also retain for the poorest classes medical benefits that are now in danger of disappearing.