View report page

29
This number is determined not so much by the number of
patients under treatment, as by the necessity for separating:—-
(a) Patients of different sex.
(b) Patients suffering from different diseases.
The admission of four persons may, and frequently does, in
this way compel the opening and staffing of four separate wards.
For these and other reasons, the cost of small Isolation
Hospitals is usually considered by those conversant with the subject
not in respect of the "average number of patients present daily,"
but
(a) With reference to the population and character of
of the district served.
(b) With reference to the extent to which the primary
purposes of such Hospital are effected.
The primary purposes of Isolation Hospitals are
(a) To reduce the normal prevalence of certain
diseases.
(b) To afford security in times of epidemic increase
in the prevalence of these certain diseases.
The criteria of the efficiency of Isolation Hospitals are,
therefore, perfectly obvious.
The Local Government Board, some years ago, laid it down
that, as a rule, the minimum provision that should be made is that
of one patient's bed per thousand of the population.
This minimum standard will be, for the first time, reached
in this district when the works now in progress at the Hospital are
completed.
The first year in which no patients were admitted to the
Council's Hospital from the "added area" was that corresponding
to the financial year ending March 31, 1900,