Annual report : 1945 / Royal Surrey County Hospital.

  • Royal Surrey County Hospital.
Date:
1945
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report : 1945 / Royal Surrey County Hospital. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    12/78 (page 10)
    THE YEAR’S WORK. In-Patients. Statistics on pages 29 will show that there have been fewer admissions to the general wards, which is partly due to the fact that, since the end of the war, there has been a gradual reduction in the number of beds required by the Ministry of Health under the Emergency Medical Service. Merrow Grange Auxiliary Hospital was closed on 1st September, 1945, and by the end of the year, the total number of beds in the hospital had dropped to 243 (including 19 for private patients), compared with 428in 1944 and 216 in 1938 (including 22 private beds). Although the number of cases for which the Ministry of Health accepted financial responsibility steadily diminished, the volume of work for the civilian population continued to increase to an extent which presented the Committee with an exceedingly difficult problem. There are nearly 600 patients awaiting admission (including 170 cases for tonsillectomy) irrespec¬ tive of emergency cases ; the Hospital is working to its utmost capacity in spite of acute shortage of domestic staff—during one period of a few weeks, a ward of 20 beds had to be closed on that account. The adoption of the recommendations of the Rushcliffe Committee, which entailed a considerable increase of the Nursing Staff, has created great housing difficulties ; the night nurses continue to be housed at Sunnydown, on the Hog’s Back, which, as a temporary measure, is expensive and not altogether satis¬ factory. Detail schemes of extension have been planned for the wards and for the nurses’ homes, but it is unlikely that building of this nature will be possible for some time to come. Out-Patients. The return of the evacuees to London at the end of the war resulted in some reduction in the number of out-patients ; the number of the Ministry of Health patients also decreased, but this was, to some extent, offset by the increasing number of patients referred by the Ministry of Pensions. MINISTRY OF PENSIONS CASES. An agreement was reached by the British Hospitals Association with the Ministry of Pensions, under which, as from 1st April, 1945, payment will be made by the Ministry of Pensions for hospital treatment of their patients on the basis of maintenance costs as shown in the Annual Report for the previous year, less such items as have been charged to the Ministry of Health.