HOSPITAL EXPENDITURE

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3798, 29 May 1928, Page 2

HOSPITAL EXPENDITURE

REQUEST FOR COMMISSION OF ENQUIRY REFUSED.

The Palmerston North Borough Council submitted a resolution to the Hon. J. A. Young, Minister of Health, at Palmerston North last night, requesting that the Government set up a commission of enquiry into the proposed capital expenditure by the Palmerston North Hospital Board and alleging such expenditure to be wasteful and extravagant. The Minister stated that he considered the proposed expenditure was justified and that therefore he would have to refuse the application.

Very little assistance was to be obtained from the views of the medical staff, said Mr. Young, for one section stated that the expenditure was justified, while the other said it was unnecessary. The position was that a Minister could direct a commission such as that asked for, provided he considered the expenditure of the local body might be found excessive. Ratepayers in Palmerston recently had turned down a loan for an increased summer domestic water supply, and this had affected the hospital seriously. A hospital had to have an assured water supply, and the Hospital Board had included £IOOO in the £IS,OOO objected to to provide an adequate water supply. All capital expenditure was closely scrutinised, said Mr. Young, and if any man was competent to advise the hospital boards it was the Director-General of Health, Dr. Valintine, who was really the father of the hospital system in New Zealand, a system which was recognised to be so good that it was being adopted in other countries.

' So far as Palmerston was concerned, lie continued, the estimates of the board had been gone into very carefully and had been considered to be justified, though not in all points. Exclusive of Otaki Hospitals, the beds worked out at 3.7 per 1000 of the population, the general average in New Zealand being 5v5, so that in Palmerston critics had little ground to go on. “The expenditure I consider is justified,” he said, and I will have to refuse the commission. In any case I have adopted a policy of making the people who want a commission pay for it.”