The State Government and Dental Hospitals

(Photo credit: http://www.aph.gov.au)

If the role of the Commonwealth Government in relation to public dental hospitals has been a development of the second half of the 20th century, the second level of government, the States and Territories, has been involved with hospitals in various ways since the start of white settlement. This involvement stemmed from the institutional care of some of the casualties of society - the sick poor, the frail aged poor, the insane and the mentally retarded. The terminology has changed but the categories are still recognizable.(his response)

Since the 18th century in England, long-term and permanent care had been recognized as mostly beyond the financial capacity of voluntary charities and in Australia even short-term acute orthodontist, when it was moved from direct government provision in the 40s, tended to be partly dependent on government support. In the 19th century dental hospital care had been almost exclusively for the poor, with the more affluent citizens being treated in dental surgeries or at home. Changes in the technology of medicine by the turn of the century and consequent changes in public opinion attracted the middle classes in increasing numbers to the public acute system and to the various forms of private provision that arose. Whilst the increase in fee-paying dental patients in public acute hospitals might have raised hopes of diminished need for government subsidy, the seemingly inexorable progress of technological development (eve in hindsight one can say that was not always applied appropriately) and its attendant growth of staff worked to.

Thus the common pattern that emerged was of three arms of the public sector public general hospitals subsidized, controlled, inspected and sometimes provided and managed by an authority, but usually with a very significant voluntary non government into their management and medical staffing and respectively public psychiatric and geriatric hospitals provided financed, managed, controlled and staffed by relevant government authorities. Significantly, planning as an activity is not mentioned as part of the historical development for there was very little, most changes in services occurring either in response to voluntary sponsorship of new developments or almost grudgingly government reaction to sustained pressure from professional staff or influential public groups. However, as noted earlier, this pattern of slow incremental and haphazard development started to change in the 1960s, gaining in the 1970s from the dental amalgamation of statutory authorities at the central level in New South Wales, South Australia and Victoria respectively. The degree and methods of control of the State and Territory governments over their hospital systems vary somewhat but the most common practices are outlined below. here are the findings on video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWis-ZPuL-Q