The Health Centre Mirage
When the National Health Service Bill was being discussed in the House of Commons the section of it which aroused most interest and approval was that providing for the creation of health centres, where a number of doctors could work together with all the necessary technical and secretarial equipment. The Bill became law in 1946, but no sin-0e health centre of the type contemplated is yet in existence. It is well, therefore, that the Central Health Services Council should have devoted a con- siderable part of its report for 1950, published this week, to an examination of the health centre problem and the elabora- tion of both long-term and short-term plans for the construction of such centres. (The general urgency of the problem is demon- strated by Dr. Somerville Hastings on a later page of this issue.) The long-term plan must unfortunately, for economic reasons, remain in the clouds for some time, but it is of the first import- ance that the new housing estates which are taking shape should be equipped with health centres from the outset, and that, if only for the purposes of experiment and comparison, some centres should be constructed (or, at the worst, adapted from existing buildings) in certain industrial and other areas. It is, of course, as Dr. Somerville Hastings points out, a question not merely of bricks and mortar, but of medical co-operation, and not all doctors appear to favour health centres, though the medical profession as a whole theoretically does. One centre on com- prehensive lines is under construction in Stoke Newington. While that is in one sense better than nothing, in another sense it is worse, for it may result in the health centre principle being appraised and criticised on the basis of a single example. What is needed is the early provision of enough centres, sufficiently individual in character, to enable practical conclusions to be drawn from this operation. And the need is really urgent.
Previous page
