Pocahontas Times

Pocahontas County Memorial Hospital
Campaign Calls for $50,000.00

County Being Organized for an Appeal to Provide More and Better Hospital Service for All.

An organized public appeal will be conducted throughout the county early in August for the purpose of raising a fund of $50,000 to establish a County Hospital that will be known as the Pocahontas County Memorial Hospital. The work of directing the campaign has been given to the Cleveland Company, of Bolton, Massachusetts, which has directed many hospital campaigns in the East. Treadwell Cleveland has begun, in co-operation with the campaign committees, to build up a countywide organization.

Headquarters for the campaign have been opened in the First National Bank Building, facing on Main Street. All who are interested in the hospital project may procure information there. A telephone has been installed, listed under the title of Hospital Campaign Headquarters.

The purpose of the campaign is to remodel and improve the present hospital for more efficient service to all the people of the County who may be in need of hospital care. After improvements have been completed, the hospital will be turned over to the County Court as a Memorial to the soldiers and sailors who died and others who served in the Great War.

Necessity for Improvement
The need of enlarged and improved hospital facilities to serve the people of Pocahontas county is well recognized. The nearest hospital on the north is 78 miles away, at Elkins, and the nearest one on the south is 60 miles away, at Ronceverte. For practical purposes, the new Pocahontas County Memorial Hospital will serve every man, woman and child in the County.

The population of the County is 15,000. In every normal community at all times, there are five persons in need of hospital treatment for every 1,000 of the population. For this reason health authorities say that there must be 5 hospital beds available for every 1,000 people depending upon a given hospital.

This means that the Memorial Hospital ought to have 5 times 15, or 75 beds available for hospital patients The present patient capacity is 35 beds in the hospital proper and 14 beds in the Infirmary. The main hospital, as a result of the coming campaign, will be enlarged to a capacity of 50 beds. This will still be below minimum requirements for ordinary demands, to say nothing of times of epidemic.

"Open Door" Policy
The policy of the new Memorial Hospital will be based upon three underlying thoughts.

First, the institution will be run purely to give service to those in need of it. It will not be conducted for profit. Service will be furnished at cost.

Second, Pocahontas County Memorial Hospital will be a hospital with an "Open Door." All patients will be welcome at all times, without distinction or discrimination. Every ethical doctor in the County will be able to send his patients to the hospital and to treat them there.

Third, the hospital will be a Memorial Hospital.

The case of a recent patient at the hospital offers a remarkably interesting and appealing example of the work which the hospital has been doing and will continue to do. This case is the story of Harper G. Thomas whose shining record in the War brought him the highest citation won by any soldier from Pocahontas.

Corporal Thomas recently underwent a critical operation in the hospital, and since then he has received supplementary care under the greatest specialist in the Country at Union Memorial Hospital, Baltimore, Md. He now is rapidly improving and will soon be discharged from the Baltimore institution. If it had not been for the fact that the Pocahontas Hospital, with its facilities was there to receive him, this gallant soldier, would not have had one chance in one hundred for life,

Plans for Hospital
The plans for enlarging and modernizing the hospital have been worked out most efficiently. By the expenditure of a few thousand dollars the value of the hospital plant will be increased out of all proportion to the cost, Following are plans for the improvements:-

1. The third floor of the hospital will be remodeled so as to add an entirely new story, with a capacity of 20 additional beds.

2. The basement will be extended under the entire main building and tha basement will be given over to the dining room, kitchen and laboratories.

3. An elevator will be installed.

4. On the west side, for the full height of three stories, a fireproof porch will be built, with a Sun Parlor for convalescents on each floor, the floors connected by iron fire escapes.

5. A nurses' dormitory will be erected on the lot between the present hospital and the river

6. The entire present plant, after enlargement, will be veneered with brick.

About five years ago it was shown, as a result of a thorough survey, that 90 percent of county dependants become dependants because of sickness. At that time the County Poor Farm was sold and the infirmary for dependant County patients was added to the hospital. This gives these infirmary patients the benefit of sanitary surroundings, proper diet, nursing care, and medical and surgical skill, all with the greatest possible economy of operation.

Doctors' Humane Service
In addition to the infirmary patients, there has been a group of patients who have come to the hospital for treatment but who are not able to pay in full, or even to pay at all, for the treatment they require. No one at any time in the history of the hospital, during the last twelve years, has ever been refused admission. The records prove that only one question ever has been asked. This question was: "What is the need?'

Such service cannot be given without a loss to the institution which gives it, and an audit for the twelve years shows a deficit in maintenance caused by this liberal policy.

Doctors, more than members of any other professions, are compelled to give time and money to charity in the form of service, through medical and surgical care, to those who cannot pay. As a matter of justice to the physicians of the County, there ought to be a County Hospital, at which such patients can be cared for in the best surroundings and with all modern facilities. This County institution, for the same reason, ought to be open to every reputable doctor in the County.

Our County doctors cannot refuse to give service according to need, but they should not be asked to make excessive sacrifices. They should not be compelled to work, not only for nothing but without the proper equipment and tools of their profession, which can be found available only at a hospital.

The Call of the Mothers
A study of birth figures in our cities and towns throughout the country shows that every year a larger number of babies are born in hospitals. In such cities as Baltimore or Washington, or Worcester, or New York or Providence, not less than 25 per cent of all babies are hospital babies. The proportion of hospital births is steadily increasing. It might be said that the hospital is destined to become the modern birthplace of mankind.

The reasons for this are quite plain. Proper care of the mother at childbirth requires a surgical procedure and ought to be surrounded with all the safeguards of modern surgical technique. These safeguards cannot be provided anywhere else so surely as in a hospital, where every possible protection is given against infection. The care of the mother after the child is born is best under hospital conditions, and so is the care of the child.

Regardless of ability to pay, every mother in Pocahontas County ought to be assured of the best possible care at the time her child is born. For this, hospital facilities are absolutely necessary.

The President of the Rockefeller Foundation, Dr. George E. Vincent, who is one of the greatest public health authorities in the world, expresses this fact by saying:

"If you want your child to have the best start in life it should be born in a hospital."

The new Pocahontas Memorial Hospital will have a Maternity Department, with modern delivery facilities. This department will, in due time, become one of the most important in the hospital, and the appeal to support and maintain it will meet with response in every home throughout the County.

Emergency Work
The value of the Pocahontas County Memorial Hospital in time of emergency cannot be overemphasized. There are some persons in every community who are so fortunate that, in time of critical need of medical and surgical care, they can forget the cost of employing the doctor or surgeon. But not everyone is so placed. When a crisis comes and emergency care must be had at once, there is only one place to which the average man or woman can go for treatment and obtain the best, and that is the hospital.

The cost of equipment-apparatus, instruments, drugs, bandages,-is so great that it is far beyond the means of most of us to purchase them anywhere else except within the hospital. All of these helps to modern treatment are brought together in the modern hospital for the benefit of all. There, also, are the doctors and nurses.

Because of these facts, a dollar expended for the care of the sick or the injured goes farther at the hospital than anywhere else. For all these reasons a modern hospital, well equipped, is the greatest value in health insurance that can be purchased at any price.