University Reproached In City Hospital Crisis

Boston City Hospital (BCH) faces the loss of its accreditation because Harvard and other universities have failed to exert their influence on public officials who determine the hospital's budget, the director of the Massachusetts General Hospital charged yesterday.

John H. Knowles '47, who is also a lecturer on Medicine at the Medical School, said that "Harvard, Tufts, and Boston University have been using the hospital for generations without accepting full responsibility to the community for caring for the sick."

Two years ago the joint commission on Accreditation of Hospitals (JCAH), a national voluntary association, put the BCH on probation. The probation period ends Jan. 1, 1966, and the hospital is up for review this September.

In response to the threat of loss of accreditation, BCH officers last January formed an ad hoc Committee which has recently released a report dealing with the specific problems outlined by the Commission.

William V. McDermott '38, head of the Committee, disagreed with Knowles yesterday saying that he is confident that the recent rallying of support would on able the hospital to meet JCAH standards.

McDermott, who is also professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School and Chief of Surgery for the Harvard Services at BCH, added that the University has taken its share of responsibility for the status of the hospital. "The administrative structure of the hospital and the city officials should function as a unit bringing in the universities, as they have, as copartners," he said.

The JCAH accreditation is based on only the physical and administrative facilities of the hospital, not the quality of the medical treatment. The status of the BCH accreditation will have no direct effect on, the accreditation of the resident-training programs maintained by the three medical schools.

The Accreditation Commission cites as the chief problems in the hospital: substandard maintenance of the physical plant, the nursing shortage, and the lack of an adequate administrative staff to deal with the pile-up of medical records.

The ad hoc Committee recommended a 9750,000 housecleaning the use of outside contractual help to catch up with the backlog of medical records, more clerks to keep abreast of current records, and the allocation, of extensive funds to correct the nursing shortage.