Sixth report from the Select Committee on Estimates : together with the minutes of evidence taken before sub-committee D and appendices, session 1956-1957: Running costs of hospitals.

  • Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Select Committee on Estimates
Date:
[1957]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sixth report from the Select Committee on Estimates : together with the minutes of evidence taken before sub-committee D and appendices, session 1956-1957: Running costs of hospitals. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    100/448 page 78
    19 February, 1957.] [Continued. so on. From that, the Board obtain their view as to whether that hospital is being run efficiently or otherwise. _ 732. Are there great variations above and below the average in your Region between comparable hospitals? There are considerable variations. 733. Can you give figures at all as to what is the percentage below or above? up to 20 per cent. above; 20 per cent. below. 734. Do you make a _ comparison horizontally, if I may put it that way, as between one department in a hospital and another department in another hospital? We regard the hospital as an overall unit, but we do compare heads of expenditure. There are often times when hospitals, otherwise comparative, might have varying costs by reason of the building situation. It might be the incidence of various medical specialities. One hospital regarded as acute might have a great preponderance of surgical beds rather than medical beds. 735. This figure is a very much bigger variation than the overall national figure? Yes. 736. How do you account for that? Because the grouping nationally is a very wide grouping. Acute hospitals are divided into four according to size. One type is the 1-50 bed group and you might have a hospital of fifty beds in that group which is acute in every meaning of the word. You might have another which has only ten beds and which is a general practitioner hospital. 737. Am I right in saying that a varia- tion of 20 per cent. either way is bigger than the national variation? ——-Not bigger than the national variation. The overall national variation is a variation of Regional averages from the national average, but actually I think it will be found throughout the whole of the country that there is a wide range within each Regional average for hospitals of the same type, that is between the cheapest and the most expensive. 738. I suppose the most rough and ready comparison you can have is the cost per in-patient? Yes: 739. The Manchester Region is the lowest in the whole country? Ves, one of the lowest. 740. Have you any reason to think that indicates that the standard of the Service is lower? I do not think that is really a question for myself or the Chairman. —(Mr. Agnew.) If I thought for one moment that because Manchester was usually the lowest or thereabouts that meant the patients in our hospitals were being fed less well than patients in other hospitals, I should be very concerned about it. I have not heard anything of that kind. 741. You. believe it achieved by’ sheer efficiency?——I honestly believe it is. I believe also that up in our part of the world possibly we are rather more hard-headed than people in other parts of the country. 742. Not hard-hearted?-———-Not neces- sarily hard-hearted. [I do _ honestly believe that where the people live and what they have been used to does account to some extent for this. 743. Is there a lower ratio of staff to patients? Yes. 744. That must have a very important bearing? (Mr. Jones.) Our costs for staff per bed, which are quoted in the National Returns, are lower in 14 out of the 19 or 20 types of hospitals than else- es in the country. That is purely for staif. 745. Does that apply to Teaching Hospitals as well? No;.Sir.: a dii-am referring to Regional Board Hospitals. was entirely 746. You can also answer for the Teaching Hospitals?-——-(Mr. Agnew.) I have not any papers here, but you can- not compare the staffing of a Teaching Hospital with the staffing of a Non- Teaching Hospital. 747. Perhaps I should not have brought that up. What room is there in the Hospital Service for greater efficiency? What lessons can you teach other Regions? There is a good deal in your Memorandum? There are so many things. Let me give you one example. You all know, I suppose, that each H.M.C. throughout the country does its own bulk buying. We have gone a stage further than that. Two years ago we started Regional buying. 748. This Committee have been enquir- ing whether with regard to certain classes of goods, national bulk buying might not
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