OUR HOSPITALS

Hokitika Guardian, 29 April 1926, Page 3

OUR HOSPITALS

B.M.A.’K REJOINDER TO .MINISTER

WELLINGTON, April 27. Dr H. E. Gibbs, chairman of the Council of the New Zealand branch of tho British Medical Association, made tho following reply to the remarks of tho Hon. J. A. Young, Minister for Health, at Huntly:— "Tlie executive of the 8.. M .A. read

with regret and some degree of resentmenf tlio statements of the Minister for Health at Huntly as reported in the Press. When we—the Health Department, the Hospital Boards, and the ILM.A.—are all working together for the betterment and improved service of our hospitals, it is hardly fair or generous, or it is as a schoolboy would put it, not playing cricket, for the Minister, of all people to attribute purely selfish and interested motives to ono of the parties. “The Minister's remarks that the control of hospitals would remain with the people, and that it would ho a serious mistake if such control were to pass into the hands of the medical profession, assumes that such, a condition was the aim and object of doctors, or would he welcomed by them, whereas we again emphatically assert that neither individually nor collectively do doctors desire to control hospitals or their policy. Doctors do feel that by reason of their intimate relationships with these institutions they should know something aliout them, and that their opinions should therefore carry some weight and respect. They know that, good as our hospitals are, they could be made hotter, could he made to serve a wider public, could lie run more economically, and could he made of greater educational value and service to the medical profession, from which, the public would receive most benefit. Knowing this. should not the medical profession speak out . J And if it. docs, should it not expect tlio Minister for Health, of all people, to listen sympathetically to the views expressed, instead of excusing and accounting for the Taihoa policy, and the smug complacency that all in the hospital garden is lovely, by insmnatinir that the interest of the doctors and the B.M.A. is wholly selfish and with the ulterior object ol getting control of the hospitals? “So far is this from being the case

that, were it at all possible or probable, the B.M.A. and the doctors would shrink from the responsibility. It is not desired to traverse the report of the speech in detail—the covert belittling of. tlie American authority because it. is American, the drawing of the red herring of appalling fees across the path, when we all know that all charges in America are appalling to our standards .the ambiguous use of the term ‘community’ as applied to the

hospitals. “But. one might point out. that the

Minister’s reference to British hospitals was particularly unfortunate loi his argument, as these hospitals aie run just as it is advocated that ours should he run—free from political influence and control, with selected boards rather than elected, and with income (from voluntary subscriptions) controlling expenditure, and not, as with us, with estimates, and therefore expenditure, mounting up year by year, with no finality in sight.