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hospitals save by the Relieving Officer's Order; but since 1884
many patients have been admitted upon the application of
Medical Officers of Health, and latterly upon application by any
registered practitioner which is supported by the production of
a medical certificate. Now, probably a moiety of the patients
are admitted without the Relieving Officer's Order; and in
course of time cases admitted upon this Order may become quite
exceptional, inasmuch as the President of the Local Government
Board proposes to ask Parliament to confer powers upon
the Asylums Board to admit patients, whether for isolation or
for treatment, upon the application of Registered Medical
Practitioners, a course which will obviate the necessity of
application to the Poor Law Authority.
THE STATUS OF HOSPITAL PATIENTS.
On various occasions statements have been made to the
effect that many patients enter the Asylums Board's Hospitals
who are able, and ought to be made, to pay for the relief
afforded. That now and again such cases do occur I am not
concerned to deny, but I am confident that the cases are fewer
than might be supposed from the general character of the
statements referred to. It is said, for instance, that four-fifths
of the patients (80 per cent.) are not "paupers," and some
years back a statement was made that 90 per cent. of the
patients had not previously been in receipt of parochial relief.
This may be true, but it does not follow that the patients were
able to pay, and information respecting the status of persons
removed to hospital which 1 published in my last Annual
Report (for 1887) fairly demonstrated the fitness of such cases
for free treatment, even apart from the fact that it was for the
public interest to promote the isolation in hospital of persons
who otherwise might have spread disease.