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over the boundary in another direction in Wembley is the Kingsbury
Maternity Hospital (56 beds) associated with the Charing Cross Group
of Hospitals.
Accommodation for the Aged. There are about 240 beds (threequarters
of these for women) at the disposal of those in charge of the
Geriatric Unit of the Edgware General Hospital, disposed in groups
ranging from 4 to 52 in ten different places. Of these, 38 are in the
Edgware General Hospital. There are 51 at the Roxbourne Hospital (the
Harrow Isolation Hospital), 35 at Oxhey Grove Hospital, 14 at the
Stanmore Cottage Hospital and 23 at Orme Lodge. Arrangements for
admission are made by the Geriatric Officer of the Edgware General
Hospital. The patients are accepted from their homes direct only to the
Edgware General Hospital and to Roxbourne Hospital where there are
adequate facilities for their assessment, initial treatment and investigation.
NURSING HOMES
These are private establishments which provide accommodation for
varying types of patients. Section 187 of the Public Health Act, 1936
requires that these homes shall be registered with the local health authority.
The responsibility for registering and supervising them rests with the
Health Committee of the County Council. Applications for registration
should be made to the Clerk of the County Council.
There has been a marked change in the services offered at these
homes since before the war. In 1938 there were 24 homes in this district,
providing a total of 187 beds, of which 100 could be used for maternity
cases. The impact of the National Health Service Act made fewer prepared
to meet the cost of private nursing homes for services which they coulu
obtain free by other means ; and the difficulties in running these homes,
partly the difficulty of obtaining staff and partly the greater cost of what
staff can be engaged, have resulted in the closing of a number of them.
The greatest loss has been of maternity beds. There has been an increase
in the number of beds available for chronic patients, some homes accepting
only this type. There is a very great need for such accommodation,
somewhere which offers perhaps only temporarily somewhat the same as
what is available in the Part III accommodation of the Welfare Service.
At one time many beds were available here for such persons, a number
being provided by trained nurses no longer engaging in private practice
but who were prepared to accept two or three elderly people in the
homes. Those accepted would not be bedridden, but they needed looking
after, and when they were ill that need was of nursing. The standard of
accommodation and of the staff of homes providing for such people could
be made appreciably lower than that in those homes dealing with maternity
cases or with acute surgical conditions.
During the year, Maitlands Home closed. It had been registered for
8 maternity and 2 medical cases.
At the beginning of the year, there were 14 homes registered for
beds, of which 13 were for maternity cases. At the end of the year
13 registered homes had 174 beds of which 5 were for maternity cases.