I11 Through Hunger

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 390, 26 June 1928, Page 8

111 Through Hunger

HOSPITAL PATIENTS INCREASE

Difficult Months Ahead

LACK of sufficient food to retain reasonable good health has driven people into the Auckland Hospital during T he past month or two, and these together with an unprecedented demand upon the regular accommodation, has taxed the institution to capacity. Thirty extra beds are to be provided within a fortnight. In the collection of its fees, the Auckland Hospital Board secures approximately onethird of the total amount charged.

The distressing economic situation which has driven people to hospital through malnutrition is reflected in a variety of ways upon the administration of the Auckland Board. Unemployment has caused poverty, hardship and ill-health, and the hospital authorities are faced with the threefold task of sustaining the poverty-stricken through a generous relief department, giving free treatment to those obviously unable to pay, and maintaining upon the breadline of existence the same patients when they are discharged from hospital without prospects. The drain upon the funds has been tremendous —and the outlook for the remainder of the winter is not bright —but the board is pursuing a vigilant and careful policy of fees-collection, which recovers approximately onethird of the total patients’ charges.

asie^s^e!viei9iaei^i^B}s^iei9t^eiei9i6K “I am afraid for the next three or four months,” said the chairman of the board, Mr. William Wallace, in announcing to-day that during last month £3,133 6s lid had been paid out in charitable relief—nearly £I,OOO more than during the same month of last year—and that the Institution had achieved a record last week by accommodating 676 patients. One of the old wooden buildings near the main entrance to the hospital is being opened In a fortnight’s time, and the 30 beds thus provided are expected to relieve the extraordinary demand upon services. RIGID COLLECTION It is inevitable, of course, that the cost of our public hospitals never will be completely met by payments re-

i ceived from patients, but during the past few years the tendency to collect all recoverable debts has grown, and the fees committees established by Individual boards have in this way raised the revenue and reduced the percentage of bad debts. The policy of the Auckland Board —and, indeed, of most boards throughout the Dominion —is never to write off a patient’s debt except as a last resort. An efficient system of examination of defaulting patients' economic positions has been operating for several years, and very few are now allowed to shirk their financial responsibility after being discharged from hospital. The cost of maintenance, which has increased enormously during the past decade, might be expected to carry with it a corresponding rise in the fees of patients, but proportionately this has not been the case. Rather has there been a tendency on the part of the boards to shoulder the community, through the contributing local bodies, with the greater part of this burden. An endeavour was made at the Hospitals Conference in 1925 to have the universal cost of treatment raised to 15s a day, but the assembled administrators wisely vetoed this proposal, pointing out that very little increase in revenue would result, while on the other hand great hardship would be inflicted upon the conscientious patient of small means, who indeed might be thereby dissuaded altogether from seeking hospital treatment. COST TO LOCAL BODIES Hospitals are not expected to make a profit on their patients, but-there is justification for the pursuit of a policy which will return to them every available penny of the revenue which rightly is theirs. The only excuse for a patient not paying for the services given him is considered by the boards to be his inability to pay. In such circumstances no board is unreasonable; if it were so, ta magistrate would have a final and a just say upon the patient’s ability to contribute. In Auckland the burden placed upon local bodies through the non-payment of hospital fees, together with increased administrative costs, has been increased alarmingly in recent years. Figures were quoted recently to establish that in the year 1924-25 the total local bodies hospital levy was £59,816, or 5s 81d a head of mean population, and that in the year 1928-29 the levy had risen to £114,529, or 9s lid a head. Population had grown by 9.5 per cent, and the hospital rate a head had risen by 91 per cent. Although to seek charity is to deliver a blow at self-respect, hunger is driving the pride from the door of many homes in Auckland. The hospital board carries the great burden, and in the efficient administration of its service, justly insists upon its pound of flesh from those who can pay.