AMERICAN HOSPITALS

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 148, 13 September 1927, Page 11

AMERICAN HOSPITALS

“WONDERFULLY EFFICIENT” NEW ZEALANDER’S IMPRESSIONS “I went to the United States to find out all I could about hospital administration. The Americans are so keen about hospitals that as soon as they knew I was from New Zealand I had to t?lk to them for hours before I could ask them any questions.” These remarks were mad? yesterday by Mr. Murdock Fraser, chairman of the Taranaki Hospital Board and a member of the Dominion Board of Health, who returned by the Niagara. He has been visiting America and Canada for the last four months. Mr. Fraser said that the Americans are eager to know all they can of New Zealand, as they have heard that the Dominion’s hospitals are exceptionally fine institutions. During his visit he was able to inspect 5 of the American institutions and he was given every possible assistance from the American authorities. Mr. Fraser is enthusiastic about the hospitals in the United States. "The public is wonderfully generous,” he said, “and many give large sums of money for the upkeep and administration of the hospitals.” Mr. Fraser says that the United States leads the world in hospital administration where a policy of centralisation has been adopted. This, he thinks, might be done to New Zealand’s advantage, as centralisation means greater co-ordination, less expenditure and greater efficiency. After visiting the Unitec? States Mr. Fraser has come to the conclusion that there are too many hospitals in New Zealand. The San Francisco Public Hospital is the last word in efficiency. The doctors are all specialists and the staffs are wonderfully efficient. In San Franciso the Chinese, numbering 20,000, have their own hospital which is thoroughly and a credit to the race. Mr. Fraser considers that prohibition is doing a great deal of good in the United States, where a healthy prosperous race is growing up.