HIGH COST OF HOSPITALS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 915, 7 March 1930, Page 8

HIGH COST OF HOSPITALS

SIGNIFICANT figures showing tlie almost alarming increase in the cost of hospital administration and management were quoted by the Hon. A. J. Stallworthy, Minister of Health, at a conference which opened in Wellington yesterday to discuss general questions of hospital management and control. In 20 years the number of hospital beds has risen from 3.1 to 5.8 a thousand of population, and the number of in-patients treated annually from 24.1 a thousand to 50.8. The number of outpatients treated has risen in even greater ratio, and the conclusion is that, while the cost of hospitals has undoubtedly increased until it is now a severe burden on tlie taxable community, one of the salient causes is the greater and greater use of hospitals by the public. If tlie amount of illness and the number of accidents involving personal injury are roughly stationary in-proportion to the population, the inference is that fewer sick people are being treated in their homes. This is an interesting development of the improvement in hospital efficiency. Better roads, faster and more effective forms of transport, and a telephone service that spreads its net all over the country, have combined to bring* more and more people to hospital. Once it was tlie regular tiling for a pneumonia ease or a broken leg to be treated at home; but now home treatment is unusual. The people prefer to rely on the highly-skilled services available. .Someone must pay for the increased demand for these services, and the result is seen in Mr. Stallworthy’s figures, every one of which spells additions to the hospital levies paid in various direct and indirect ways by the public. It is necessary to add that the development of efficiency in hospitals has not been neglected on the financial side. Collections of fees from patients are now made with a far greater and systematic energy than was applied to the task twenty years ago. Once it was almost the usual thing to waive the fees if the patient or his relatives were not in affluent circumstances, but now they are almost harried for payment. The annual amount now paid to hospital boards in fees is nearly double the whole annual maintenance cost of their institutions 18 years ago. But still many local bodies find the hospital levy a burden which they are barely able to support, and although it is plainly futile to lioqie that tlie demand or occasion for expensive facilities may diminish, if the conference which opened yesterday can devise a method by which costs of operation can be reduced without any loss of efficiency, it will have conferred a great boon on the taxpayer.