COST OF HOSPITALS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 77, 21 September 1911, Page 5

COST OF HOSPITALS

"RECKLESS EXTRAVAGANCE." A correspondent, "YY.M." sends us the following clipping from the London Daily Telegraph, being port of a report of an address delivered 'by Dr. Jordan Lloyd to the" British Medical Association's conference at Birmingham recently, and which, he a ays, is not without interest locally when the erection of a new and and expensive hospital is about to be undertaken: A matter demanding serious attention was that of the increasing cost of modern hospitals. Their capital outlay on construction and equipment was becoming appalling, and their maintenance charges were correspondingly high. Much of this expenditure was due to the tendency seen on every side for public bodies to reckless extravagance. This craving for the lavish spending of other people's money had become a disease, and institutions would at some future time have to be erected for the treatment of persons so affected. There was absolutely no need for the spending of large suma of money on the construction of public hospitals, and there was no necessity for the siclc people in their wards to cost as much as they did. lie claimed to speak with some authority, if only for the irea.son that lie had worked in charit-ably-maintained hospitals and in a ratesupported hospital during the greater part of his life. The object for which all such institutions existed was identically tlie same' —the conversion of sick into sound humanity. The ram material taken into these institutions was alike, the treatment the same, the results identical, but the difference in cost was phenomenal, A charitable hospital nowcost from ioUO to £BOO per bed for construction and equipment, and from !J)s to ,C2 a week per patient for maintenance. The Birmingham l'oor Law In-' Urinary cost less than flit) per bed, audi Hie patients in it 14s (kl per week to maintain. How were these striking differences to be explained? Certainly not by any difference in the quality or tlie quantity of the work turned out. The fact of ojie being a teaching institution and the other not accounted for something. doubtless, but the difference—easy to find—depended on other things than that, but this was not the place to discuss them, lie merely wished to call attention to their existence, and to express bis own opinion that the sooner all .public hospitals became municipally or State supported the better for everybody in any way concerned with them—patients, doctors, and the public alike. Medical teaching and medical research might be hettur done in institutions altogether controlled by more responsible authority.