*It all became public knowledge on Tuesday June 24th
At the Palmerston North Hospital Boards 1980 AGM
- as it began taking steps to have the Foxton Maternity Hospital closed
by NOVEMBER 1980.
Board members had mixed feelings about the closure issue-therefore no final decision was made, but was to be made no later than AUGUST 1980.
The Palmerston North Hospital Board's chairman, Doctor Gordon Cumming could see no alternative to a closure.
The hospital was to cost $100,000 for the current financial year, and for only 45 births in 1979-80.
He felt that with the 22 bed Levin Maternity Hospital within a relatively short distance from Foxton, and well able to adequately cope with the Foxton bed-rate of 4.49, it was impossible to justify the expense of running Foxton Maternity Home for a small number of births.
A report at a meeting on 24th June 1980 from the Boards chief executive, Mr Stan Tootle showed a big drop in birth numbers from 73 to 45 and 1976-77 saw no patients for 14.8% of the time, but this vacant time had increased to 35% by 1980. The report showed that there was either no patient or one patient, for 62.8% of the last financial year and no more than two patients for 87.4% of the year. Numbers admitted in 1979 were 64, mainly from Foxton or Foxton Beach, as Shannon mothers went to Levin. The cost of running the hospital in 1979 was $133, 254 nursing salaries taking up $104,175. Since, salaries had increased by 10.4%. The savings made by a closure of the hospital could be between $80,000 and $90,000 - if the part time domiciliary nurse scheme was put into practice.
Foxton's Doctor Howard Teppett, (the board member for Horowhenu), spoke definitely in favour of keeping the hospital open, "there is no question about it he said", and told that the hospital was the first satellite hospital in the country not set up in a metropolitan area, and had not been built by the Hospital Board but given to it as a maternity hospital in 1942. It had been a country cottage hospital before then.
Since the maternity home opened in 1942, 4200 people had been born there. Its hey-day was in the 1950's when it was an extremely busy place. Ohakea was developing and did not have enough on-base accommodation. Foxton's six-bed hospital had seven or eight patients many times.
Doctor Teppett also said that while he could see that an institution that cost the hospital board more than $2,000 in nurses' wages per baby wasn't economically viable, there [CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE}
