The Nationalists' Mater Dei bubble (I)

It is to the credit of the 1996-1998 Labour government that our people will have a new university teaching acute general hospital in the Tal-Qroqq area.

When the project was conceived in the early 1990s, the Nationalists were only ready to offer the public split hospital facilities.

The Nationalist government had had talks with the Fondazione San Raffaele to open a hospital in Malta. What started as a small private hospital built and run by the Fondazione San Raffaele, ended up with the Nationalist government building a 450-bedded hospital that was to be run by the Fondazione. This hospital was to split the acute service into two: part at the new San Raffaele Hospital at Tal-Qroqq and the rest at the 70-year-old St Luke's Hospital. The Nationalist government was to pay the Fondazione San Raffaele for the medical services provided to patients. It is on record that, at that time, the Nationalist government was examining the possibility of introducing a co-payment system where the patient had to partially pay at source for the medical services provided!

It is worth recalling that the Fondazione San Raffaele was handpicked by the Nationalist government and was not chosen as a result of a public call for tenders. Contacts between the Nationalists and the Fondazione were on the basis of contacts with friends of friends! Moreover, the designer (Ortesa Spa) was also chosen without a call for tenders. The designer made a mess of the initial designs and was responsible for the early delays. The building contractors Skanska had in fact made a 12-week delay claim up to January 1996 because of design problems. Furthermore, in March 1996, Skanska maintained that 50 per cent of Ortesa's mechanical drawings required adjustment.

When the Labour Party was elected in 1996, I held discussions with all the stakeholders. Everyone was against the concept of split acute hospital services. The stakeholders lamented that they were never consulted by the Nationalists about the new hospital prior to October 1996.

Thus, the Labour government inherited the original Nationalists' plans of a construction site that the local medical experts did not agree with. Even more serious is the fact that the Labour government inherited an array of confused input by almost all of those involved in the building of the San Raffaele Hospital at Tal-Qroqq. Suffice it to recall that the hospital basements were partially ready in October 1996 - a time when the hospital was supposedly nearing to being operational!

The Labour government of 1996 decided to rationalise the whole concept based on the medical and surgical needs of our people in the 21st century. For this reason, the Labour government commissioned a number of reports in order to be in a position to take informed decisions about the hospital.

As a result of these reports, fundamental decisions included:

• the preparation of a new medical brief;

• the concept of the hospital had to change from that of a specialised one of 450 beds to a state-of the art university teaching general hospital of 800 to 1,000 beds;

• the contract of Ortesa Spa had to be terminated and a new call for tenders had to be issued.

There was no significant difference in the costs between the illogical plans of the Nationalists and the rational vision of the Labour government for one hospital at Tal-Qroqq to replace the 70-year-old St Luke's Hospital. The Fondazione San Raffaele disagreed with these comprehensive changes taking place and pulled out.

As a result of a public hearing in Parliament, it was decided that Skanska (previously engaged by the Nationalist government of pre-1996) were bound to complete the construction of the hospital on the agreed footprint of the time. Since the Labour government wanted to be transparent in its political decisions, it was decided that any construction outside the existing footprint was to be tendered out.

The renowned British hospital designers Norman & Dawbarn were engaged as the new hospital designers after a call for tenders was made. They had estimated that the cost of the construction, together with those of the mechanical and electrical services would be just over Lm70 million and the Tal-Qroqq hospital would be commissioned by the year 2001.

Concurrently, the Norfolk and Norwich 850-bedded high technology general acute hospital was being built. Labour singled it out as a benchmark. The British hospital was completed in four years with a total cost of about Lm160 million.

Prior to the 1998 election most of the construction of the original footprint had been completed and the interior designs were at an advanced stage.

Dr Farrugia is the Labour Party's spokesman on health and a former Health Minister.

Part II of this article will appear tomorrow.