Page:LewisMeriam-TheProblemOfIndianAdministration.djvu/301
The records and statistics should include: (1) Mortality statistics, (2) morbidity statistics for reportable diseases, (3) family case records, (4) dispensary records, (5) hospitals and sanatorium records, (6) school medical examination records, and (7) records of work done by the various medical workers.
No attempt will here be made to indicate precisely what each of these records should contain or how they should be tabulated and presented. To attempt such a presentation would open up the whole field of vital statistics. If the Indian Service can get an adequate appropriation for this work it will have no difficulty in securing competent experts who in cooperation with public and private agencies can work out the details.
Hospital Facilities in the Indian Service. The hospital and sanatorium facilities offered in the Indian Service do not meet the minimum requirements according to accepted standards in this and other countries.
Hospital and sanatorium standards and practices vary enough to necessitate a separate discussion of each type of institution, such as school and agency hospitals, sanatoria and sanatorium schools, and hospitals for the insane.
In the main, this problem will be discussed in its broadest aspects with reference to specific instances that best illustrate the point in question.
Hospitals. The Office of Indian Affairs has classified its hospitals under the following headings: (1) School, (2) agency, (3) school and agency, and (4) hospitals for the insane. With the exception of the last named, the demands made upon the three types of hospitals are much the same. They are supposed to offer facilities for general surgery, confinements, and acute and chronic diseases, and, in some instances, for such acute infectious diseases as tuberculosis, trachoma, and for other communicable diseases.
In order to get a fair cross section of the character of the work done in Indian Service hospitals, statistics were compiled from Indian Office reports relating to seventeen hospitals in as many states. The following tabulation summarizes the data. The figures are only totals, as it was impossible to determine the exact nature of the individual cases from the reports submitted. They give, how-