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Hokitika Guardian, 26 May 1928, Page 2

There is a good deal of discussion in the North Island just now tin reference to the cost of hospital maintenance. In numerous cases hospital maintenance is mounting tip with a corresponding increase in local body levies, and the inevitable rise in the rates. Several councils are protesting and probably some investigating comrpissions will result, In the North

Island, where population is increasing, there is naturally more accommodation required.! In a centre such as Auckland where the largest hospital exists, it is not adequate for requirements. At the same time the cost of additions is mounting up, and provision for this contingency is adding to the local body levies. One of the obvious objections to centralisation ol hospitals is the enormous cast which would have to he fated to carry out tho scheme and provide the requisite accommodation for patients who would he brought to the centre. There are various aspects of the problem, and a North Island paper discussing the subject remarks that the more we improve local hospitals the greater is the growth of community interest, and while it may be argued that 46 hospital boards, make a cumbersome framework for hospital administration no board would submit to be obliterated. Local hospitals have been established to meet local needs, and the people rightly demand that they be maintained, athough the cost of maintenance is a growing burden. Medical science may come to our aid by lessening the ills to which flesh is heir to, but hospitals all the year round unfortunately have not many vacant cots. The institutions are saving human life, and that is their justification. The public, however, require to develop tho mental attitude that “lie who cures a disease may be tho skilfullest, hut ho that prevents it is the safest physician.” Another moot point raised in regard to tliils subject is that of paying patients—a matter probably most prominent in the larger centres of papulation. Regarding {this question a Christchurch paper says that the main argument that, so far, has been raised against the provision of special wards in general hospitals for paying patients has been that doctors would concentrate their best service oil those able to pay most, and give less thorough attention to the poor. The profession should he quite able to set tho public mind at rest on that score. But there is one further point. If the provision of paying wards in the public hospitals is to mean the ultimate extinction of the private hospitals—as it may—will there he the same field as there is to-day for experiment in the .direction of hospital improvement? That is a question which many people would like to see answered. In the scattered centres, where population is not large, such as on the Coast, the present hospital arrangement, appears to he giving general satisfaction. Locally, there is a very satisfied feeling with regard to the matter. Tho institution is well staifed and well maintained, and patients (who are the chief concern) speak highly of the attention and care given them. A result so satisfying Is the best answer which could he expected, and we may conclude that so far as ’Westland is concerned, the people ns n whole arc well Satisfied with existing hospital arrangements.