The Hospital

Abstract

In-patient treatment is expensive as compared with primary care. Costly on an individual basis (it is normally cheaper for the same complaint to be treated in the home than in the hospital), it is costly as well in aggregative terms (the hospital service accounts for a large and disproportionate share of a nation’s health budget). Expensive or not, in-patient treatment is often crucial where the problem, too complicated for the community nurse and the family doctor, requires specialist care and institutional back-up. Once upon a time the rich could be treated at home and the hospital was the refuge of the poor. The medical division of labour and the increasing capitalisation of procedures revolutionised the traditional pattern; and nowadays even the affluent are prepared to go into hospital for their health. Inclusion as well as expense evidently renders the hospital an important topic in the provision of care.