ThE Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET. AUCKLAND FRIDAY, JANUARY 4, 1929 A HOSPITAL PROBLEM

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 553, 4 January 1929, Page 8

ThE Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET. AUCKLAND FRIDAY, JANUARY 4, 1929 A HOSPITAL PROBLEM

IF Xew Zealand is such an excellent democracy as is fondly imagined, there should be little difficulty about the institution of classified wards in our public hospitals. The Health Department is undoubtedly dallying with the idea. It lias been arguing the matter over with itself for some time, and it is continuing to argue. Within recent years two noted overseas surgeons, Dr. Malcolm MacEackern. of Canada, and Dr. Alfred Mayo, of the famous clinic at Rochester, U.S.A., have

examined the Xew Zealand hospital system in a more or less unofficial way. As both hailed from countries where the community hospital scheme is most strongly developed, it was only natural that they should leave behind the clear impression that something of the kind—some system of graduated facilities on a sliding scale of payments—was lacking in the New Zealand arrangement.

So patently was the Health Department convinced by these and other suggestions that it has from time to time made guarded references to legislation upon the subject. On every occasion when these ideas have been ventilated in Parliament, they have encountered most pronounced hostility from the Labour Party. Mr. H. E. Holland’s opposition has been particularly vehement. The implication that the Reform Government contemplated the institution of private wards solely as a means of raising class harriers in the democracy of sickness need not be given serious attention. But there may be other grounds on whieh objection to the principle may be made.

It is true that the petty considerations of caste might lead a number of misguided people to lift supercilious noses at the mention of private wards in public hospitals; but it is equally true that, before the urgency of life and death, the thin and artificial pretensions of imaginary castes would break down. A measure of education over a period of years, of teaching by results, would show what benefits the private ward system could confer; and he would be a foolish person, indeed, who sacrificed his physical well-being for his dignity by rejecting the best treatment and facilities available.

With the unsubstantial elements of snobbery dismissed, there remains the reality of cash. There might he a tendency for good paying patients to be tended sedulously at the expense of the less-favoured citizens in the wards. The danger has apparently not been noted in America. Moreover, the fear of any such danger is a poor tribute to the lofty principles and fine performances of the medical and nursing professions in New Zealand. Much more real would be the danger that pacing patients would consider they were not getting their money’s worth in ratio to the treatment and measure of comfort given in the public wards. The great problem which the private ward system in its contemplated form cannot solve is the disposal of the middieclass sufferer, the man who has lived in moderate comfort all his life, who regards his privacy as a sacred right, and who shrinks, even in sickness, from the barrack-room publicity of the publie ward. Yet this class of sufferer will be no more able to afford the high fees demanded for a private room than he is able to afford the costly luxury of a room in a private hospital to-day. He represents the mid-way point between the poor—of whom virtually no fees would be demanded—and the rich, who could pay whatever might be asked. His class outnumbers either of the others, and pays immeasurably more than they in the taxes that support the present system. Before embarking on any experiments, the department had better be sure that it has a real remedy in its'hands.