Medicine: U. S. Hospitals

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Every day in the year, the American Medical Association keeps a watchful eye on every hospital in the U. S. Last week the Journal of the A. M. A. published its annual hospital report, which contains "the most accurate figures available."

Significant facts:

> There are now 6,166 registered hospitals in the U. S., as compared to 6,128 a year ago. These hospitals hold more than one million beds. Over 70% of the total in crease in beds was due to expansion of public hospitals, which now total 1,728.

State hospitals which accommodate mostly insanity, cancer and tuberculosis patients accounted for most of this increase.

> "Most striking of all changes" was the increase in nervous and mental hospitals, which averaged only 350,000 patients a day in 1927, but over 550,000 last year.

> Every 3.3 seconds, a patient enters a U. S. hospital. During 1938 one person in 14 became a hospital patient. If he went to a general hospital he stayed about twelve days. Each year this average period of hospitalization "is clipped shorter and shorter."

> In 1938, "for the first time in history," over one million U. S. babies (out of two million) were born in hospitals.

> Greatest scarcity of hospitals is in Mississippi (1.4 beds to each thousand inhabitants). Greatest abundance is in the District of Columbia (8.6 beds per thousand). Most States average from two to four beds per thousand inhabitants.

> There are about 6,100 internships available every year. Since graduates of U. S. medical schools totaled less than 5,200 last year, there are "approximately 900 positions that cannot be filled from our own medical schools. . . . Currently a relative shortage of interns exists." This shortage, said the Journal, may be remedied if hospitals induce interns to remain two years instead of one, and accept well-trained graduates of foreign medical schools who pass tests given by the National Board of Medical Examiners (see p. 4).