Clinics
G.F. 323
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general beds will be required in the period before additional
Government hospitals can be brought into commission.
Unless
the planned psychiatric wing of the Princess Margaret Hospital
can be brought into early commission the shortage of beds for
psychiatric patients is also expected to continue for some time;
Castle Peak Hospital remains heavily overcrowded even though
dealing only with the most pressing cases. More beds are also
required for geriatric cases even after a geriatric unit of
300 beds, the first of its kind, situated in the Princess
Margaret Hospital becomes operational in 1975. Towards meeting
all these requirements new hospital building is clearly required.
Existing hospitals are concentrated predominantly
2.6
in the urban areas, With the development of new towns, action
is needed to provide facilities there as well as to ensure that
a reasonable distribution is established between acute and non-
acute beds.
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It is however at the general out-patient and
specialist clinic that a patient's initial contact with the
medical services is established. In addition to the services
provided by private practitioners and in welfare and low cost
clinics, there are now 38 Government polyclinics and clinics
providing a wide range of out-patient, preventive and
specialist services. The Medical Development Advisory Committee (MDAC) found that this number fell short of that required to meet the standards set in 1964, and they also reported that in practice
the distribution of clinics was uneven and that this contributed
to the heavy overcrowding of some general out-patient clinics.
The pressures on some of these clinics are clear and at certain
specialist clinics unduly long waiting
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