BRITISH HOSPITALS

Waikato Independent, Volume XXVII, Issue 2869, 3 December 1927, Page 3

BRITISH HOSPITALS

NEW CLASSIFICATION. ABOLISHING PAUPERISM. “Until the Cabinet lias decided on' the Parliamentary programme for next session/’ said. Mr, Neville Chamberlain, the British Minister of Health, “I cannot say whether my Poor Law reform proposals will .be embodied in an immediately forthcoming Bill. Mr Chamberlain was discussing the reference in his speech at the dinner of the British Medical Association to his'proposed transformation of Poor Law infirmaries into municipal hospitals.

Emphasising his care,for the'reduction of the three kinds of hospitals — voluntary, Municipal, and Poor Law — to two —voluntary and municipal—Mr Chamberlain said:

Thero are many people who won’t go into the Poor Law' hospitals because of -the stigma of pauperism. That would disappear if they became municipal hospitals. It would not be difficult to form some joint body, embracing municipal and voluntary hospitals, who should decide as to the need for extension, the direction in which extension is wanted, and the place where the extension should be provided.

In that way you would secure the future place of the voluntary hospitals in the general hospital scheme of the area, and you would take care that the existing hospital accommodation would be used to the utmost extent possible by the interchange, both of patients and staff, between the, different kinds of hospitals. At present there are thousands of beds in Poor Law institutions standing empty, w'hile every voluntary hospital has a queue of people waiting for admission. “Some people,” added Mr Chamberlain, “are possibly suspicious that there is an inclination to do away with the voluntary system. That is exactly the opposite of what I want to do. My desire is to save the voluntary hosp?tals from a danger now overshadowing them.”