The beds on which patients were being treated in the corridor and examination areas of the Casualty Department at Mater Dei Hospital have been removed, The Times has been told. The extra beds had prompting vociferous protests from staff.
Extra beds have instead been installed in the hospital's Medical Admissions Unit in an attempt to alleviate the bed shortage being experienced as some 65 beds remain occupied by patients who should be in long-term care.
The government yesterday cited an increase in respiratory illness as the reason behind the bed shortage forcing doctors to treat patients in one of the Casualty department's examination areas -Area 2 - and also in the corridor of its paediatric section.
The department's doctors and nurses last week registered a strong complaint about the situation.
The complaint came after a patient who suffered a heart attack had to be resuscitated in the middle of the corridor, in full view of other patients, in a situation that the staff deemed to be "unacceptable, shameful and appalling".
This followed the case of a woman who 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. And, last summer, an elderly man reportedly died on a stretcher in Casualty because of lack of available beds in wards.
Earlier this month, Health Minister Joe Cassar said healthcare services director general John Cachia was liaising with the management of different hospitals to try and utilise vacant beds but added that more staff was needed.
Answering questions by The Times, a spokesman for the Health Ministry indicated that the bed shortage stemmed from an increase in respiratory illness which required patients to be admitted to hospital.
"Influenza, chest infections and pneumonia increase drastically in the winter months. This results in a larger number of patients requiring admission for critical medical conditions. This, in turn, exerts pressure on the rest of the caring chain," the spokesman said.
He said that, although state-of-the-art equipment in the new hospital meant that illness was diagnosed earlier, critically unwell patients, who also suffered from multiple chronic ailments, took time to recover.
"Medical, nursing and allied professional staff constantly evaluate when patients require hospital care and repeatedly review in-patients, even on weekends and public holidays, in order to maximise the use of available beds," he said.
Some of the more elderly and frail patients did not recover completely and required further care and rehabilitation, he said. This was being addressed by increasing the number of rehabilitation beds in other hospitals.
He said there had been a lot of investment in long-term facilities in residential homes for patients who could not return home, including the renting out of some 200 beds in private homes. The government was committed to building a rehabilitation hospital to meet the needs of an ageing population.
The spokesman said the authorities enhanced the training, recruitment and retention of staff and this month published an open call for the recruitment of foreign nurses.
Asked whether the authorities were considering postponing non-urgent operations until the bed shortage problem was resolved, the spokesman said this was not the case. He said patients were not being sent home earlier after operations in order to free up beds but were only discharged when they were fit to return home.