MUCH OVERCROWDED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 December 1940, Page 4

MUCH OVERCROWDED

WELLINGTON PUBLIC HOSPITAL RETIRING SUPERINTENDENT’S REPORT. PROBLEM LONG NEGLECTED. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. A report to the Hospital Board by its retiring Superintendent, Dr. A. R. Thorne, draws attention to serious overcrowding and to a lack of progress during six years of planning. Dr. Thorne gave figures showing that every ward was overcrowded. The board, he said, was up against a very serious problem, which had been allowed to develop for years in spite of many warnings. Any further delay in dealing with the deficiency in beds would end in disaster. The average ictal of patients being dealt with r: the Wellington Hospital six years age was 580 daily. The average last month was 1,931. In 1934, waiting lists were comparatively small, except in one section. Today there were no less than 1,138 patients on the waiting list. Twelve months ago it was 741. Dr. Thorne reviews the effect of many temporary remedial measures adopted over the past six years. The use of the old Newtown School building during the winter was the subject of protests both by the City Council and Fire Board. Dr. Thorne comments on the inadequacy and ineffectiveness of certain .other nearbv nrrommnda-

lion outside the hospital itself. He says beds in the Public Works Department Ward, now under construction and the Hutt Valley Hospital, the foundations of which were hardly started, would only cope with military needs and the equivalent of waiting list requirements. That meant that the present overcrowding would become even worse unless more wards were provided within the next few months. The main hospital and improvised accommodation had to 'carry a daily average of 198 more patients than the maximum. The normal occupancy should be only 80 to 85 per cent of the total beds available. The figures for September were: — Normal beds, 352: plus verandahs, 62; total, 414. Daily average, 612; highest occupancy, 683. The excess was not due to military cases, the daily average for these being under 30 and more than offset by daily average medical cases housed at the Infectious Diseases Hospital and not shown in the tables quoted. In the Children’s Hospital, the daily average was 94, with a total normal accommodation for 64. Ninety-four was by no means the peak figure, which was 134.