The organisation of the preventative and curative medical services and hospital and laboratory systems under a Ministry of Health
1919 1919 1910s 18 pages service under the National Insurance Act is that it has no hospital accommodation which it can call its own. At the present time, practically the only accommodation for accidents and general diseases is in the so-called voluntary hospitals, and the number of beds in those ho...
| Institution: | MCR - The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick |
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| Language: | English English |
| Published: |
London : Co-operative Printing Society
[1919?]
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10796/5E49E406-2D12-4DDE-A5B2-04D7F2D044A4 http://hdl.handle.net/10796/11E1941D-D8D1-493E-8639-008F69558459 |
| Summary: | 1919
1919
1910s
18 pages
service under the National Insurance Act is that it has no hospital accommodation which it can call its own. At the present time, practically the only accommodation for accidents and general diseases is in the so-called voluntary hospitals, and the number of beds in those hospitals is nothing like the number required. As far as can be ascertained from somewhat inadequate records, in not one county in England is the number of beds available as much as two per thousand of the population, whereas the number required for general purposes is reckoned to be from two to five per 1,000, according to the character of the locality. Exclusive of Ireland, there are now probably between 27,000 and 30,000 beds supported by voluntary contributions, and the number required, even for the minimum of two beds per 1,000 of the population, is 80,000. The voluntary method of supporting even the existing hospitals has quite failed to keep them free from financial difficulties, and the only possible method of coping with the urgent necessity for increased accommodation is for local health authorities to establish their own hospitals, to which all patients requiring institutional treatment would have a right of admission. Public hospitals when established should become the health centre or institute of each local health authority, and should provide accommodation within their walls for all medical activities. Whenever possible, the offices of the Public Health Service should be transferred to the hospital, so as to encourage co-operation between preventive and curative medicine. School clinics, when not held at the schools themselves, maternity and child welfare centres, and dispensaries for the prevention of venereal diseases, should be housed within the health centre, and all doctors connected with the service should have their consulting rooms at this and other convenient centres, instead of at their own houses. District midwives and nurses should also have their headquarters there. At the larger hospitals there should be diagnostic laboratories and research departments. Finally, at all the health centres there should be physical training rooms for the correction of infirmities and deformities and a lecture-room for teaching the patients and the public generally the laws of healthy living. It is important that at each health centre there should be a sufficiently large staff of medical officers to avoid the present serious loss of time on the part of patients whilst waiting to be seen, and to enable each patient to be instructed how to co-operate intelligently in his own recovery. Further, there must be a sufficient number of senior medical officers to supervise the work of house surgeons, house physicians, and other members of the junior staff. 7. VOLUNTARY HOSPITALS — All the present voluntary hospitals should eventually be merged into the public hospital system and should be supported and administered by the health authorities for the following reasons:— (a) Voluntary efforts have failed to keep pace with modern hospital requirements and their increasing cost, hence some of the present hospitals are not as efficiently equipped as they should be. (b) A dual hospital system is bound to create difficulties and cause waste and overlapping and, as a public hospital service is in any case necessary and should eventually provide more than double the present accommodation of the voluntary hospitals, the latter ought to be absorbed by the former. (c) For the sake of the individual and of the community, medical aid and hospital accommodation should be the right of every citizen, and no one should be asked to accept them as charity. At first the voluntary hospitals might be given the choice of remaining on an entirely voluntary basis, or of being taken over by the health authorities, or of receiving subsidies from the rates provided that on inspection they proved to be efficiently maintained. 5
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| Physical Description: | TEXT |