ADMISSION TO HOSPITAL REFUSED

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27395, 7 July 1954, Page 6

ADMISSION TO HOSPITAL REFUSED

BOARD MEMBER CRITICISES STAFF DOCTOR (New Zealand Press Association)

GISBORNE, July 6. “This is the sort of thing that gives the hospital a bad name,” said Mr H. H. Barker at a meeting of the Cook Hospital Board, when discussing a case in which a casualty had been sent out of hospital at 11.30 p.m. on a cold night and had had to be sent to a hotel.

The patient was brought to the hospital by a farmer living 20 miles out of town, and was left at the hospital with an assurance that he would be admitted some time after 11 o’clock that night, said Mr Barker. However, the employer was advised that the case would not be admitted and that the patient must be taken away. The patient was eventually sent to a hotel in town, arriving there about 11.45 p.m. Mr Barker said that it was not in accordance with ordinary humanitarian consideration to turn a patient away from hospital at that time of night, even if the case was not one which would ordinarily be admitted. He could not understand a doctor on the staff giving such instructions. The medical superintendent (Dr. R. J. B. Hall) said he would inquire into the circumstances