HOSPITAL APPOINTMENTS

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4365, 13 January 1922, Page 4

HOSPITAL APPOINTMENTS

BUREAUCRATIC CONTROL. POLITICAL PATRONAGE POSSIBLE. THAMES BOARD OBJECTS. “It the Minister for Health wants to control appointments to hospital staffs, the best thing he can do is to come down, and run the Thames Hospital himself,” wrote Mr W. C. Kennedy, a member of the Thames Hospital Board, in the course of a letter apologising for his absence from yesterday’s meeting of the Board. An approving laugh greeted the reading of this trenchant expression of opinion upon a proposal to introduce the bureaucratic political system of control into hospital’board affairs. The chairman (Mr J. McCormick) supported the protest of the Auckland Hospital Board against the Ministerial encroachment. If ths Minister wished tp nationalise the hospitals, let him bring in the necessary measure; but the speaker would not support nationalisation. The Department would not run the hospitals either as efficiently or as economically as the boards do, judging Iky the way other Departments were being run. The Minister already had the right tp veto an appointment within 21 days. He moved that both members of Parliament for the district be written to, asking them to support the protest against the carrying of the proposed new legislation. Mr Hallyburton Johnstone seconded, stating that the Government Departments already had more work in hand than they could do with credit to themselves and in the interests >i efficiency and economy.—Carried.