Private hospitals being used to cut waiting list for cataract operations

Patients in need of cataract operations – Mater Dei’s longest waiting list – can now undergo the surgery for free in private hospitals as the government embarks on slashing the backlog.

They are being contacted by Mater Dei Hospital according to who has been waiting the longest, the Health Ministry said.

The process is being carried out following an agreement reached between the ministry and two private hospitals, Saint James and St Anne’s.

According to figures released in Parliament in June, 13,502 operations were pending at Mater Dei Hospital – the longest list is for the removal of cataracts, which amounted to 4,752, followed by orthopaedic operations.

Health Minister Joe Cassar expressed his satisfaction at the “important step”, whereby the government was keeping two electoral promises: that health care remained free; and that, in collaboration with the private sector, the waiting lists for operations continued to decline.

The cooperation with the private sector followed another initiative that started last year, under which the government pays for patients needing a PET scan to do the cancer test privately.

The decision announced yesterday meant the amount of patients undergoing operations would continue to grow, Dr Cassar said. Meanwhile, surgical interventions at Mater Dei were also on the increase.

In the last year of St Luke’s Hospital, 32,746 operations were carried out, while 2010 saw an increase of 9,000 to 41,795.

The growth was a result of more nurses being employed, more theatres being used, more time allocated to operations and, where necessary, consultants reaching retirement age carrying on working.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, the hospital’s new CEO Joseph Caruana said the focus was being shifted from the waiting list to waiting time.

“We have started doing more interventions in the theatres,” he said, pointing out that, in orthopaedics, a theatre that was previously not being utilised was now being used and was starting to eat into the waiting list.

In Budget 2010, €4 million was specifically allocated to address waiting lists – a fund that had remained untapped and was now being farmed out to reduce the cataracts’ waiting list in particular, he said.