Eleventh report from the Select Committee on Estimates : together with the minutes of evidence taken before sub-committee E and appendices, session 1950-1951: regional hospital boards and hospital management committees.
- Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Select Committee on Estimates
- Date:
- [1951]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Eleventh report from the Select Committee on Estimates : together with the minutes of evidence taken before sub-committee E and appendices, session 1950-1951: regional hospital boards and hospital management committees. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![25 January, 1951.] [Continued. has risen. In other words, the money which is going into the hospitals is not going in for the real purpose of enabling the doctors to treat the patients, but to provide something for the patients which is unnecessary for their recovery though it may be agreeable to the patients. Have you given that matter consideration, and could you give us some sort of definition which we might be able to use in cona- sidering this matter because we are very anxious to arrive at a conclusion about it?—Our dividing line—my colleagues will elaborate on this if they do not consider I have expressed it fully—would be this : we would regard as administrative staff the staff in the secretary’s department of the hospital, and we use “secretary” in the widest sense to include the supplies depart- ment and the finance department of the hospital. We would not include in the administrative staff of a hospital those in the employ of the matron, staff employed in cooking food for the patients and taking it to the patients, staff nursing patients or treating them for their illnesses. 245. Maids working in the wards?—-We would not include maids working in the wards in the administrative list. Adminis- trative staff are essentially those working in the secretary’s department in the broadest sense of the term “ secretary’s department ”’. 246. So far as the doctors are concerned do they think that there is an excessive number of people working among the maids, cooks and so on, or is this the allegation which you make, that excessive administration expense is entirely confined to the headquarters and secretarial side?— ue is entirely confined to the secretarial side. Mr. J. Enoch Powell. 247. The distinction dividing the maids who serve in the wards from those “bed makers” or “gyps” to whom you were referring a little time back, the ones serv- ing the doctors, is that the latter are administrative but the former are not?—I think one would say that, yes, I think so. It is very difficult to draw a very sharp dividing line. JI should prefer to draw my sharp dividing line really between the secretarial department and the rest. That is the real dividing line. Miss Ward. 248. I am not quite certain if this is an appropriate question at this moment, but I would very much like to ask, as there seems to be sall this increase in administrative staff, if you have any views on the length of time, which does involve a tremendous loss of work in the country, which people have got to wait when they go to a hospital for treatment. I think there is a growing criticism among responsible people who are working in the country that they are ex- pected to give up certainly half a day, or ‘a whole day, when they are summoned to a hospital. It does seem to me that, if you have got an efficient administrative staff, it ought to be possible to cut down on that waiting period. It is certainly a loss to the community, if not to the hospital?—-I am sure my colleagues will have something further to say on that point, but as far as I am concerned this is a perennial. Many of the most ex- perienced brains in the organisation have been brought to bear upon this problem before the National Health Service came into being. An appointments system in its various forms for out-patients was intro- duced before the war into many hospital in this country. The difficulty about the matter, of course, is to gauge how long a doctor is going to spend on each patient. Some patients can ibe dealt with very quickly ; in the case of complex and diffi- cult cases it may take half an hour or three-quarters to deal with one such patient. It is impossible to predict that. If patients could be dealt with in the same way that a booking clerk can issue tickets and if you could make an allowance of so many seconds for each person you could time it well, but you are not dealing with that ;. you are dealing with sick people. That is the great problem. It has been greatly aggravated since the appointed day—it is not universal—in many parts of the country where there has been a greatly increased pressure in the out-patients’ department. The difficulty of gauging the time at which to tell a person to come is bound up with the extreme difficulty of deciding how long each patient is going to take to be examined and dealt with. There is yet a further rider to add. In some ways this problem per- haps is not as great as it may seem, because many ‘patients like to come much earlier than they need, and that fact is especially noticeable perhaps in the big cities. There is no doubt that many people do come as out- patients and enjoy their wait; they come early ; they meet their friends ; they get re- freshment from the canteen; they are warm; and they have the best gossip of the week ! We should be very careful not to exaggerate this. 249. I know, but I have just got one par- ticular case in mind of a civil servant holding a pretty responsible position who is afflicted with a very, very severe infan- tile paralysis, and she has continually to go and have her supports altered and dealt with. She tells me she gets a summons from the hospital to say ‘“‘Come at (such and such) a time,” and no regard is ever paid to the fact that people holding respon- sible positions cannot just throw wp a day’s work and go off at any moment on a summons from a hospital. I am talking about responsible people; I am not talk- ing about the ones who go and chatter; I know all that side. I am concerned with people who have responsible jobs and who](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b32182478_0063.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
