Cynthia Busuttil
Doctors complain of hospital bed shortage
Concerned doctors have written to the hospital authorities to complain about a bed shortage which they believe is posing a threat to patient safety.
In a letter addressed to Mater Dei Hospital acting superintendent Lina Janulova, doctors said they would not assume responsibility for system failures that were threatening the safety of patients.
They have called for an immediate solution to the bed shortage and overcrowding in Malta's only acute public hospital.
"Maintaining acute patient care at Mater Dei Hospital must be given absolute priority. Otherwise, our patients' lives are at stake," states the letter sent by consultants at the hospital's Department of Medicine.
Their main concern revolves the placing of beds in the emergency department, including the paediatric area.
"Overcrowding in these areas has become comparable to, and reminiscent of the situation at the former St Luke's Hospital medical wards," they said. The doctors said the crowded conditions could easily lead to cross-infection and errors in the administration of drugs.
Moreover, the doctors have lamented that the current conditions severely compromised the privacy and dignity of patients, who do not have access to bathroom and toilet facilities.
According to Medical Association of Malta president Martin Balzan, doctors have been forced to examine patients in front of other people.
Recently, a woman was reported to have given birth to her second child on a stretcher in an examination room because there were no available beds in the delivery room. Doctors are also concerned about the potential of patients getting lost in the system, with consultants not knowing when a patient has been admitted under their care.
In their letter, the doctors said that although this was being addressed through the introduction of patient registration, a lot depended on how quickly the data was inputted into the system.
The doctors have pointed out that while acute patients were being nursed in makeshift designated areas during the critical first 24 hours of their admission, stable elderly patients undergoing rehabilitation and awaiting long-term care are occupying "expensive beds" which were originally designed for managing acute patients.
Before Mater Dei opened in 2007, then superintendent Frank Bartolo had said no so-called social cases would be allowed in the new hospital. But just months after the first patients were admitted, between 60 and 80 beds were being blocked by people who should not be there.
Just after he was sworn in as Health Minister last Wednesday, Joe Cassar said Mater Dei was currently being used as a primary, secondary and tertiary centre, and emphasised the need to build a new rehabilitation hospital and have a good primary health system. When contacted, Dr Cassar said the director general for healthcare services John Cachia was liaising with the management of different hospitals, including St Vincent de Paul Residence, Zammit Clapp Hospital and Mater Dei's geriatrics department, to try and utilise currently empty beds. However, he said, this required more staff.
"The ultimate issue behind all this is the huge lack of human resources," he said.
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Frank Portelli 2BFRANK
Feb 14th 2010, 16:26
So we are now facing "a threat to patient safety"
Why did we let it come to this state ?
What a pity
Dr Frank Portelli
lgalea
Feb 14th 2010, 15:42
J.Saliba Aren't we paying more than enough taxes already? Where can we find the money? Did you forget that VAT was increased by 20% to make good for the new hospital and health services?
J Farrugia The thing is that the PN had planned a hospital costing nearly 400 MILLION MALTA LIRI with less than half the number of beds that St Lukes had when the population has exploded since St Lukes was planned (and population growth had been taken into account when St Lukes was planned).
Mater Dejn was designed for 450 beds and it's only thanks to the PL that it has more than 800 beds. PL actually had planned for another floor, but the PN government stopped it because it was a PL project. Now we are seeing the results. This is apart from the PN government not taking care to make sure that once the hospital was operating it would have a full compliment of required staff. As regards maternity, there are NO social cases in the maternity wards and it is simply bad planning by the PN incompetents. Why are there so many very long corridors and areas and not more wards?
Jimmy Magro
Feb 14th 2010, 14:05
@J Farrugia
It seems that we have different approaches in life. Yours is based on praying and mine is based on practical solutions that humans have to make themselves. In a diversified and tollerant society both solutions may be expressed. The issue is whose solution will finally make life better for our citizens.
John Portelli
Feb 14th 2010, 13:53
Malta's population has grown and we have more foreigners as well as a large number of illegal immigrants among us who are using the hospital, however, we do not have enough beds. POOR Planning and not telling people the truth. Planning is always key and we have fallen behind. We need a new hospital to the existing one, not close the other one. What is being done with the old hospital. Why not turn it into a viable alternative and make use of it to alleviate the problem. 1000 beds for a a country of almost half a million at any given time is not adequate enough.
Rosalie Freestone-Bayes
Feb 14th 2010, 12:41
Originally designed to identify and use spare capacity in private hospitals, to reduce waiting lists in public hospitals, the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) was established in 2002, and had treated over 41,000 public patients on hospital waiting lists within the next 4 years.The Fund uses capacity in Dublin and Britain. Both public and private hospitals have benefitted from NTPF business but most of all the patients themselves.Cannot we equal or even surpass this achievement?
J Farrugia
Feb 14th 2010, 11:46
Jimmy instead of writing theories, why not state what is really happening at the Hospital. From my residence every day from 5.00 a.m. till dark at night I hear the ambulances' sirens going to and from places of traffic accidents, labour related accidents, etc. the truth is that fatalities are fast increasing - thus necessitating the request for hospital beds, and if our Mater Dei has a place for 40 emergencies, it cannot take the 60+ which is on a daily basis. Where do we put these extra 20 if there is no place for them except in a corridor? The same applies to maternity wards. If there are 20 beds, we cannot take the extra 5 which seem to come from nowhere! So what can our medical groups do? Nothing. Try and manage by crisis. The more accidents which occur, the more beds we need, EVEN IF WE PUT SOCIAL CASES OUT OF THE EQUATION. Thing is that accidents are becoming the order of the day at Mater Dei and I always pray to the Almighty to give strength to our medical teams since they are doing miracles at their own lives' expense.
Jimmy Magro
Feb 14th 2010, 11:27
One question that started coming to my mind is the whole issue of the allocation of space in the state of the art hospital finally baptised as Mater Dei Hospital. We have been told about the lenght of the corridors - but it seems to me that it would have been better to construct more bed-rooms rather than those huge reception halls, corridors, and other unproductive space. The use of those corridors are more suited to a country with cold climate than a Mediterranean country.
There are other sectors that lack space, such as the blood testing unit and the emergency facilities. The emergency office lacks a mic-loudspeaker system in order to facilitate the communications between the persons inside and outside of the glass fenced cubicle where a person has to provide the details when entering the emergency unit. Mater Dei needs to transfer bed ridden cases out of the hospital by having such cases transferred to another facility.
The idea of having incentives to encourage people to have personal medical insurance is not new. It should be actively considered. Furthermore, we can also consider to simulate the experience from Massachusetts where the State introduced medical insurance for all.
J.Saliba
Feb 14th 2010, 10:41
The health issue regarding waiting lists and overcrowding has been the centre of controversies for several years. Has the government ever considered offering its citizens the possibility of funding partially a health insurance that would surely alleviate the burden of huge expenses he is forking out at the moment and at the same time solve the problem of waiting lists