The herald., 1897-02-08
THE RECEIVING HOSPITAL
How It ls Made to Compete With the
Doctors
People Who Are Able to Employ Surgeons
Prefer to Get Their Hurts At
tended to Gratis

There is one good institution in Los
Angeles that is being imposed upon. 1t
is the receiving hospital at the central
police station. That branch of municipal
service was designed to be simply an
emergency hospital, where the victims
of accidents. assaults and poison could
quickly have their troubles attended to,
when lack of time or some other reason
made 1t impracticable for them to be
taken to their home or elsewhere.
The receiving hospital was not intend
ed to be hospital of indigents or a
free dispensary, yet it is being worked
as such by number of people who have
temporary trouble Of various kinds. 1t
is becoming common for people who cut
their hands on broken bottles, pinch
their fingers in hay press, bump their
heads by falling down stairs, or suffer
in other ways, more or less serious, to
take their wounds or broken bones to
the receiving hospital to be repaired by
the police surgeon without cost to them
selves.
Many Of these people who have an
erroneous idea of the purposes of the re-
ceiving hospital are quite able to pay
a surgeon or physician but they prefer
to save money by getting free attend
ance and medicine. They thus not only
overwork the police surgeon and i'm
pose on the city's generosity, but they
deprive some more or less worthy doctor
Of a chance to- attend their needs and
earn fee. There are many surgeons
who would feel aggrieved to know that
people who are able to pay will go right
by their open office to- have smashed
finger, broken arm, lacerated ear, con-
fused head or bunged-up eye put in re-
pair at the receiving hospital and at the
public expense. The police surgeon is
not complaining but there is a chance
that other authorities may deem it ad-
visable to discourage too promiscuous
misuse of this excellent adjunct to the
police department.
In instances when person has met
with an accident or is found suffering
from poison, there is no occasion to ask
questions as to the patients ability to
employ surgeon, but when a man comes
from out in the country to bring in
smashed toe or another travels across
the city to have bottle-cut in his hand
sewed up, it Is not heartlessness that
would prompt such leading question.
In emergency cases, where the patient
is unable to pay for his keep" he is
dispatched to the county hospital as
soon as he is able to be moved as there
are no facilities at the receiving hospital
for keeping patients any length of time,
even IL II were right FOR the city to un
dertake the charge.
Nearly every day there are calls for
the police surgeon to go to some cheap
lodging house or somewhere to see a
sick man. By the rules of the depart
ment these calls cannot be answered,
neither can a man. no matter how sick
he may be, be removed from his own
room to the police station. But the few
restrictions placed about the conduct
of the receiving hospital do not prevent
the imposition.
For those unfortunates who have no
means to pay doctor, there is a city
physician and other practitioners who
are philanthropic enough to donate
certain amount of service, and there is
a county hospital where they can have
good care If the rules of the central
police station were made more rigid in
classifying patients the really poor
would not be the sufferers.