Charity Hospital, for the first time in its history, will begin collecting accident room and in-patient fees as of Jan. 1, 1965.
The move became official yesterday when the board of administrators at the hospital voted to charge 50 cents for registration in the accident and admitting rooms and the clinics, while charging in-patients $1 per day.
However, people on welfare rolls and recipients of Kerr-Mills funds for the aged will not be charge.
DR. RICHARD W. Hughes, chairman of the board's finance committee which recommended the fees, said the charges would have the effect of "screening out people who are not really deserving of hospital care."
He emphasized, however, that emergency patients will be taken care of whether or not they are able to pay the charge, though the fee will be expected.
Under state law, all fees collected from patients at Charity go into the state mental health fund.
HUGHES STATED, though, that meetings between Charity board members and the state legislative budget subcommittee had resulted in an understanding that this legislation would soon be changed.
In another move, the board voted to integrate the hospital's tuberculosis wards because of "inequities" in segregated facilities.
Dr. Gilbert Tomskey, chairman of the hospital's medical committee, said that Charity is presently about 80 per cent integrated. He said the integration action is "one more step toward a gradual elimination of physical segregation at the hospital."
THE BOARD also appointed a committee to study the reestablishment of a dietary school at the hospital.
The hospital's dietary school lost its accreditation during the previous administration when a food administrator was hired who did not have accreditation with the American Dietary Association.
