Mater Dei to take first inpatients next month

The first inpatients will be moving into Mater Dei Hospital next month, The Times has learnt.

The patients are expected to start moving from wards at St Luke's Hospital to the new hospital around the middle of November and Mater Dei is expected to be fully functional before Christmas. The first concrete signs that St Luke's tenure as an acute hospital is coming to an end will be seen on November 5. From that date, operations that are not considered urgent and outpatient appointments will be stopped for a week. This will pave the way for medical services to move to the new hospital.

The following week - starting November 12 - outpatient services will start making the move gradually, a spokesman for Mater Dei said.

The week-long break from elective surgery will allow patients at St Luke's time to recover before their ward is moved to Mater Dei.

As far as possible, patients who are admitted to St Luke's will complete their treatment there and be discharged, with movement from one hospital to the other avoided as much as possible to ensure patient safety.

The spokesman said there will inevitably be patients whose recovery takes longer and who will have to be moved.

"We need the cooperation of both the patients and their relatives for the migration to be successful," he said.

Once a ward moves to the new hospital, operations associated with that ward will start being performed at Mater Dei.

In the meantime any urgent operations that are needed will continue to be performed at St Luke's Hospital. The same goes for outpatient appointments that are considered urgent.

The migration of wards was described as an "irreversible process" and once it starts there is no going back since hospital services are linked together.

The information campaign about migration will intensify over the next few weeks with a website and an info-line expected to be launched this month. A manual for patients and relatives will be sent to all households on the island.

It was emphasised that non-acute patients will not be moved to the new hospital, but remain at St Luke's, which is expected to become a rehabilitation centre. He said it did not make sense for an acute hospital of Mater Dei's calibre to also cater for non-acute patients, both from a financial point of view - since a bed in an acute hospital costs more - and also to reduce waiting lists.

Some two weeks before the move, support services such as the hospital pharmacy, the mortuary and medical records will be shifted to the new hospital.