Annual report : 1935 / Newbury District Hospital.

  • Newbury District Hospital (Newbury, England)
Date:
1935
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report : 1935 / Newbury District Hospital. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    6/28 (page 4)
    THE FIFTY-FIRST ANNUAL REPORT of the Committee of the Newbury District Hospital for the Year ending 31st December, 1935. THE WORK OF THE YEAR. In admitting 577 new patients and in giving first-aid, without admission to our Wards, of 125 cases of minor accident, the normal amount of work has been done. The number of beds occupied each day was on the average 32‘03, a slight increase' on the preceding year. CONTRIBUTORY SCHEME. The number of Scheme Members admitted continues to increase, and the Hon. Officials and Collectors are to be congratulated on the maintenance of their keen interest in their work and the efficiency with which it is carried out. While they reap no pecuniary advantage from their labours, they see the benefits secured to the members when admitted as patients, and know how materially they have strengthened the financial position of the Hospital. INCOME AND EXPENDITURE. Thanks are once more due to our subscribers and others for their continued financial assistance, which, in combination with our other sources of income has enabled us again to record a successful year. EXTENSIONS This Hospital was opened in 1885 and having now attained its Jubilee it is hoped that within a few months the plans adopted by the Committee some years ago, when it was faced with the necessity of increasing the number of patient-beds by 50 per cent., of providing accommodation for a numerically larger staff, and of modernising the equipment and certain portions of the buildings, will be carried out to completion. Lack of the requisite funds prevented the execution of these works as a whole in 1928, and it was resolved to take two steps, instead of one, in converting the Institution into a more modern Hospital of a size more suitable for its present-day work. Experience has proved that the first step, taken in 1928, was a wise one, and the second, at the conclusion of which the Hospital will appear as a completed and fully equipped one of 65 beds, was commenced early in 1936. The cost of these changes has been estimated at nearly £23,000, towards which sum the Trustees have, with the sanction of the Subscribers given at a Special General Meeting, handed over to the Committee the whole of the free funds in our Capital Account, reserving only the Endowment Funds, in accordance with the terms of the Foundation Deed. This will leave a deficit of about £7,000, which it is hoped to raise during the summer of 1936 by means of appeals to our friends in the Borough and District. In our report for 1934, we wrote as follows : — We generally have a waiting list of would-be patients whom we are unable to admit, and the courses open to them are to continue to wait until there is a vacant bed, to apply for admission to the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading, which has its own problem of a waiting list, or to go into the County Council Hospital.