The medical charities of Birmingham : being letters on hospital management and administration / by Scrutator.

  • Scrutator
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The medical charities of Birmingham : being letters on hospital management and administration / by Scrutator. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    pital in that city. The wider diffusion of General Sospitals and the cm-tailnient of special ones is the truest economy. Self-interest, paity prejudice, professional jealousy, inane traditions, will often resolve the question one way. The public welfare will often resolve it after a very different fashion. I have ali-eady advocated, as earnestly as I could, the more frequent rotation of medical officers. It is just as important to the true interests of the charity that the members of the managing committee should more frequently ie changed. Of the eighteen persons who formed that com- mittee last year, half have held office for nearly twenty years, some for thirty years and upwards. Is it likely that reforms will ever be suggested by those who have grown up amongst the abuses of which I complain ? At least a third of the committee (those who have most neglected its meetings) should retire annually, and not be eligible for re-election. This system already works admirably at other local institutions. The chair- man of the committee should be elected for at least one year. It is comical to think that the only office in which permanence is essential should here be the only one which is subject to repeated change. The auditors should be chosen fi-om the general body of governors. At present the extraordinary farce is annually played of electing auditors, both of whom are respon- sible for the expenditure of the institution, being members of its committee, and one of whom is actually its treasurer. No one doubts the ability or the highmindedness of these gentlemen, but that is not the question. Three or four is about the average attendance of non-medical men at the meetings of the Hospital Committee—but how can the attendance be greater ? By some stupid law,- while the House Committee are not required to meet more than once a month, the General Committee are bound to assemble in weekly Board. If they attended monthly, or even quarterly, their attention might be directed to matters of the deepest importance; as it is, their attention is diverted from such matters by trumpery details of domestic concern. There is another matter of graver importance even than this, and that is the custom bg which the medical officers of a charity taJce their seats at the managing Board. The interests of medical men are very often entii-ely inconsistent with the interests of the charity they serve. Can any system be more abominable than that by which the medical officers of an institution are at the same time its masters ? It is time that this great evil was looked steadily in the face; it is at the bottom of much that goes wrong in hospital administration. They manage these things better in France. On the Continent, generally, such a custom is unknown; in London its opposite is all but universal. Some years ago Mr. Hodgson made an emphatic declaration that during the whole twenty years he had been ** surgeon to the Hospital, the responsibility of everything not manage- able by the meanest capacity, had devolved upon him. Is it to obtain practice, or to retain influence that medical officers attend manag- ing boards? In the future constitution of committees of management let medical officera be conspicuous by their absence. Tlioy may rest assured that many important (juestions will be discussed more freely when they are gone. Of course their opinion will be often desired. Of course they will often have suggestions to make. When this is the
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