No tender for provision of health care from private hospital issued - MAM

No tender has been issued for the provision of health care from a private hospital, the Medical Association of Malta said.

The association, which is in dispute with the government over a shortage of doctors, has given out directives which will see half of the country's health centres operating without a doctor as from tomorrow.

Social Policy Minister John Dalli offered the union to take the dispute to conciliation yesterday but the union said this would only be possible when the ministry changed its starting point that service could not be reduced and when it came forward with a new credible proposal which could form a good basis for conciliation, the Medical Association of Malta said.

It said that failing this, it would go ahead with the proposed directives on Monday.

MAM argued that a small number of just over 40 full time doctors and a few other partime family doctors managed to see over 520,000 cases per year. The fact that these doctors performed the work of 110 resulted in savings in salaries of over 1.5 million euros.

It said that the proposal to tender out services by Monday was not credible as it was clear that to date the director of contracts has not issued a tender for the provision of such a service.

The ministry also announced yesterday that a three-month temporary agreement had been reached with St James for health services provision to be given from its Zabbar and Sliema hospitals between 5 p.m. and 8 a.m. when most of the health centres in Malta would be closed.

But MAM said that as the number of doctors in Malta was finite, any eventual contractor would inevitably try to recruit doctors from the health centres further depleting the medical manpower. This could lead to a total collapse of the health centres as many of the remaining doctors could decide to leave.

MAM agreed with the government that in the long term Malta needed only four fully equipped health centers.

However, while “fully equipped” for the government seemed to mean enough equipment, for MAM this meant enough doctors," it said.

"It is a pity that while making this statement the health authorities keep insisting on keeping a large number of health centres open when it was practically impossible to provide adequate medical staff for an appropriate and safe service, " MAM said.

It said that its proposals maximized the benefits for patients with the limited manpower available.

"It is only because of the intransigence of the health authorities that MAM is constrained to issued directives to its members in order to achieve what is simple common sense," the association said.