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18
The patients spent 8,295 days in hospital, which makes the
gross cost of each patient per day 14/2¾ or £4 19s. 7d. per week,
and the net cost, after deducting the amounts paid by the patients,
8/0¾ per day, or £2 16s. 5d. per week. With the patient days
8,295 and the staff days 8,483, or a total of 16,778, the average
cost of food for patients and staff is l/2¾ per person per day.
The cost of food per patient per day is less than in the previous
year by a halfpenny, or 3½d. per week.
The building of the new Maternity Hospital at Perivale
was begun in August after delays consequent on the claim put
forward by the Ealing Town Council that they were themselves
maintaining a Maternity Hospital and at the same time contributing
to the maintenance of maternity bed accommodation for the whole
county, in other words it was contended that they were paying
twice for the same service. In view of the favourable turn of the
negotiations in the early part of the year the Ealing Town Council
consented to the work being begun and later the proposals put
forward at a conference of representatives of both councils were
finally ratified by the County Council. These proposals mean,
in effect, that the Middlesex County Council will make a payment
to the Ealing and the Brentford and Chiswick Town Councils
through the Hospitals Committee for each case admitted to the
joint Maternity Hospital from the two areas, the payment to be
determined by the average cost of maternity cases in the County
Maternity Hospitals.
The new Perivale Maternity Hospital is likely to be ready
for use in October, 1937, and with the transfer of cases to the
new Maternity Hospital the old Maternity Hospital will be added
to the Isolation Hospital.
In the annual report for 1935-36, 1 referred to the work of the
previous four years having been of a strenuous and difficult
character and the same must be said of the year 1936-1937. In all
this strenuous period, as has been said on a previous occasion, there
is one whose work had been of the greatest value to the Committee
and to myself and that is Mr. H. Birrell, the Clerk to the Committee.
His work has really been of outstanding merit.