PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. TUESDAY, APRIL 5, 1881. CLOSING HOSPITALS.

Patea Mail, 5 April 1881, Page 2

PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. TUESDAY, APRIL 5, 1881. CLOSING HOSPITALS.

Threats to close hospitals in various parts of the colony have compelled the Government to face the question of subsidy. We are informed that an intimation is being sent to County Councils that the usual hospital subsidy of pound for pound will continue to be paid until Parliament otherwise orders. The financial year ended with March, and as the Government have been paying only half the usual subsidy to the end of March, we presume the full subsidy will be resumed from that date. The Hospital and Charities Aid Bill of last session is to be again introduced, and the policy of assisting hospitals will then be settled. That the Government do contemplate assistance is evident. The question of closing the Patea Hospital has therefore ceased to be urgent as a financial expedient; and the policy of maintaining a hospital as a County institution can be considered with more maturity of judgment than was exhibited by some members of the Council at the last hasty discussion. Are there no considerations of humanity to weigh against finance ? Firstly, it is said the extension of railway to Waverley and Ngaire does away with the necessity of a County Hospital —why ? Because it is as easy to convey patients from the centre to cither railway station as it formerly was to convey them from the outside to the centre of the district. That argument captivated nearly all the Councillors at first glance. It sounded so reasonable. But observe how misleading it is. A morning train and an evening train leave once a day, at Waverley and Ngaire; about ton hours elapsing between the two. If a man gets injured in the morning, in some middle part of the district, he will have to be convoyed to Ngaire or to Waverley; and reaching the station say after eight o’clock a.m,, the morning train will have departed, and the injured man must wait till the evening

train—waiting a whole day with a log broken in two places, or an arm cut off in felling a tree, or kicked by a horse in a vital part, or other injury which may involve intense agony. If he gets injured in the afternoon, ho may roach the station too late for the evening train, and must lie in agony till morning. A doctor and a temporary hospital would have to be placed near each station, to succour accident cases occurring between morning and evening trains. If no such provision were made, the first serious case of injury, resulting perhaps in death or in deplorable agony for want of prompt medical care, would so shock the public conscience in the district that Councillors would find themselves blamed as hardened culprits. All this trouble is avoided by the ready facility of putting an injured man in a conveyance at any hour, and running him to the Hospital, where facilities and medical care would be available at once.

The average cost of maintaining the Hospital during the past three months has been under £l2 a week, equal to £6OO a year. The average number of patients has been 0. The cost per head therefore averages £2 8s per week under present conditions. The Council has sunk several hundred pounds in building and furnishing a County Hospital, but this expenditure will not recur, though a small sum for repairs and occasional requisites must be allowed for. The above estimate of £l2 a week includes £3O a year for repairs, &c. But assuming the patients to average £2 10s per head, and taking an average of 5 admissions and 5 discharges per month, how will the present cost compare with the plan of sending patients by train to Hospitals in other Counties ? Firstly, other Hospitals will receive Patea patients only on condition of room being available ; and this presumes that vacant beds are to be provided at each place in excess of local requirement—a strange presumption truly ! When those two Hospitals happen to be full, where are the County Council to send their patients, and how T arc serious injuries to be treated ? The average charge for patients at New Plymouth is £1 per week, and at Wanganui it will probably be the same, though a lower offer was quoted some time ago. The cost at Wellington is 30s. As soon as either Hospital Committee saw that Patea was without a Hospital, it would be strange if that Committee did not raise the price to a paying level. If those Hospitals had the subsidy stopped, they would have to raise the price much higher than at present. Take it, however, at 25s a week. Each patient has to be conveyed by train. Most patients need examining by a doctor to test their fitness. Say doctor’s fee, 10s 6d ; carriage to railway an average distance, 10s : fare to Wanganui or New Plymouth, with cab fare, about 10s ; return fare of caretaker to accompany patient, with day’s wages and refreshment, say 265; and return of patient cured, say 9s. His total cost for one month, which is the average time in hospital, would thus amount to £2 Is a week as compared with £2 8s in the Patea Hospital. This represents a weekly saving of 6s 7d per head by incurring all the trouble and inflicting the frequent agony of sending sick persons to be treated outside the district; and the whole saving on five patents would be £1 13s per week ! The Government pay half that amount, and the County is saddling itself with an excess expenditure of IGs Gd per week by maintaining a Hospital and all its requisites in the centre of the district.

Every patient would not need a caretaker in the train; but a man seriously injured might need two, and a compartment to himself. In cases of injury, a local doctor would have to sot a limb or tic an artery, and must be fetched a long distance or the patient be conveyed to him. The doctor s lee in such case could not be under two or three guineas. Such extras have not been reckoned in the above average. A patient is brought without charge at present, but under the new plan he must first be taken to the Chairman of the Council, who will send him to a doctor—doctors would be scarce, not to say independent, under that plan and then would commence the journey to a

distant railway, with a chance of only two trains a day. Such are the strong points of this new economy ! We have had this hasty hubbub about closing the County Hospital to save the crushingexcess of 335. a week without subsidy, or IGs. Gd. with the present subsidy. All considerations of humanity, of ready attention when injured, of facility for friends to call at the Hospital when in town on business, of having a necessary institution under local management, of increasing population in the district—■ all must give way to the reckless wisdom of saving IGs. Gd. a week by closing the County Hospital.