Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 152, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 June 1915 — HOSPITAL NEEDED IN JASPER COUNTY [ARTICLE]

HOSPITAL NEEDED IN JASPER COUNTY

Law Provides Manner of Getting One —First Steps Are Taken to Secure One in Rensselaer. Within the past six weeks some twenty-five persons in Jasper county have been taken to hospitals in Chicago and Lafayette for the purpose of operation or treatment. In some cases the hospital expense has. been a great hardsMp on the relatives or friends of the afflicted, wMle in other cases patients badly in need of operations are unable to be sent because of lack of funds and at this time at least one lady sorely in need of operation may die because she has no funds to take care of the hospital expense or to provide a nurse in her own meagre home.

Rensselaer is the center of a very large territory with a population of fifteen or twenty thousand people. There should be a hospital here and there is little doubt that it would soon become self-supporting. Thf egislature of 1913 passed an act that provides for the building and maintaining of a hospital and when the attention of Judge Hanley was called to this fact last Saturday he took i mmediate steps to have a petition drawn in order that the hospital might be established. The law provides that upon the petition of two hundred resident freeholders of the county, 150 of whom shall be outside of the corporation of l;he city where the hospital is to be established, the board of county commissioners may levy a tax for estabishment and maintenance.

One petition is being circulated in Rensselaer and every person has signed it. The other petitions are 1» be sent to Remington, Wheatfield and other parts of the county. The law providing for the establishment and maintenance of hospitals quite complete. It provides that 1 tve trustees shall control it and that none of the trustees shall be practicing physicians. The trustees serve without pay. The county treasurer receives and disburses all the money. 'he law provides for the issue of >onds in anticipation of the collection of the tax.

The right to condemn property for hospital purposes is provided in case the owner cannot agree on what the board of trustees regard a fair price. There are a number of locations in this city that would be ideal in location and for general surroundings. The law provides that any who wish to make bequests or donations may do so, the hospital trustees under authority from the commissioners having control of it. There shall be no discrimination against any practioners of any school of medicine recognized by the laws of Indiana and the patients in the hospital shall-have the absolute right to employ at their own expense any physician or surgeon they wishA provision is made allowing the trustees’to fix the pay to he received from patients for their care in the hospital. They shall also he the judges as to whether persons shall be accepted as charity patients, that is, they shall judge as to the ability of persons applying as charity patients to pay. The importance of a hospital here seems well worth all the cost. It may result in a saving of many lives. It will be a great convenience in handling emergency cases. It is probable that eventually a number of maternity esses would he handled in the hospital. It would prove a great thing in the development of our county doctors. It would mean that thousands of dollars that now go to Chicago and Lafayette would remain in this county. It Is a humanitarian thing to do and The Republican urges all to give it their most hearty support