The UHS director admits that students do sometimes wait a long time in the walk-in clinic. But, he adds, almost no other health service has a walk-in clinic, which means you must go to the desk and register for the next available appointment slot. "Waiting in our clinic is certainly an improvement over that," he concludes.
Even as UHS adds personnel, overcrowding seems inevitable because more people use the various services more often each year. In 1965-66, there were 47,068 visits to the Medical Services, an increase of 3333 over 1964-65. The number of visits to Stillman Infirmary increased very little, but the Emergency Service handled 5850 cases--about 700 more than the year before. There were 1200 more surgical visits, and a 20 per cent increase in the total number of psychiatry patients. Coping with this growth is more difficult than it seems, because the rate of growth is highly erratic. In the Medical Services, for example, the increase was 3333 visits this past year, but only 647 the year before.
WHILE more students are using UHS, more are also using outside hospitals--the number was up 36 per cent last year, most of whom were surgical patients. Of course, the Health Services is not equipped to handle all medical cases and these will naturally be treated in other Boston hospitals. Furthermore, UHS does not offer to its students a great variety of specialists. There is a regular staff in dermatology, since skin problems are so prevalent among college-age people, but for most special treatment a student must go elsewhere.
Although students "expect everything from UHS," as Dr. Farnsworth says, it simply is not economically feasible to offer much specialization in the Services. UHS, nonetheless, tries to employ at least a few doctors with knowledge of each major area of specialization.
Economic unfeasability is also the reason why UHS has dropped the obligatory medical examination upon entrance to the College. According to UHS's report to the President which will be released in April, requiring the examination only of athletes and students who will be working does not seem to be having any harmful effects. Illness gets diagnosed, either by voluntary visits to UHS or by examinations elsewhere.
As UHS has grown from what Dr. Farnsworth called an "abominable" setup in 1954 to what he now says is "the most imitated and studied College Health Services in the country," its problems have naturally changed in character. Instead of the adventures and dangers of starting a new health network, Dr. Farnsworth now faces the more sophisticated, if less dramatic, problems of maintaining a going concern.
"As our diagnostic facilities grow increasingly complex," Dr. Farnsworth explains, "it becomes more difficult to maintain the warm, friendly relationship between student and doctor."
"We're determined to keep it personal," he emphasizes. Dr. Farnsworth is the creator of the giant complex of men, machines, and buildings which is the University Health Services. But he is also a psychiatrist, author of many books on student problems, and a genuine interested-but-not-pushy father figure, who prefers talking about young people to talking about the headaches of administration. And he wants to keep his baby from turning into a Frankenstein.