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through the Public Assistance Committee will steadily increase.
If insufficient beds are available either (a) patients who should
properly be treated in hospital must be turned away, or (b) there
must be gross overcrowding of the hospital, a circumstance strongly
against the best interests of the patients and the proper administration
of the Institution. In addition to the steady influx of chronie
cases from the Public Assistance Committee through relieving
officers there is a decided increase in the number of acute cases
admitted on the order of the Medical Officer of Health or the
Medical Superintendent. These latter cases now constitute nearly
two-thirds of the whole. When the limits of accommodation are
reached it is the latter cases that will have to be turned down, as
none of the other hospitals in the area can meet the need, working
as they are already at their full capacity.
Each of the twelve main wards at Mayday Hospital has on
floor area recognised in hospital practice, six beds too many, but
the present bed accommodation at Mayday Hospital, namely, 466,
is on this overcrowded basis. With excess, over and above the
bed accommodation, amounting at times to as many as 100 patients,
the already overcrowded conditions are much aggravated.
For a general hospital the number of chronic cases in Mayday
Hospital is high. This is owing to the lack of sufficient accommodation
in the chronic wards in the Queen's Road Homes. The
consequent lessened rate of turn-over ties down the number of
beds which could otherwise be used for a succession of cases. The
original idea was to build a hospital block for chronic cases at
Queen's Road. This proposal was not proceeded with, however,
owing to the events of August, 1931, but it was agreed that the
Mayday Hospital should be extended in accordance with the
original plan, with one extra ward block for acute cases, and that
for the present the chronic cases should be retained there.
A summary of the extensions contemplated to the Mayday
Hospital is as follows, viz:—
A three storey block, consisting of three wards of twenty beds
each and six side wards of one bed each on the women's side. The
wards could be used for acute medical and surgical cases, and some
of the existing wards be reserved for the chronic sick whom it was
originally thought might be transferred to a new block at the
Queen's Road Homes. The demand for beds on the female side
is much greater than on the male side. At present one of the
wards on the male side is occupied by females.