Good news ‘exposes bad planning’

The agreement reached between the government and private hospitals to reduce the backlog of cataract operations was good news for patients but exposed the authorities’ lack of planning, Labour said.

Health spokesman Marie Louise Coleiro Preca said it had taken the government 17 years to build the “state-of-the-art” Mater Dei Hospital, yet the foreseeable increase in demand for cataract operations had not been catered for and the government had to resort to outsourcing.

On Monday, Health Minister Joe Cassar announced that the government had reached an agreement with two private hospitals, Saint James and St Anne’s, which will carry out cataract operations paid for by the state.

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

Speaking during a press conference outside the Health Ministry in Valletta, Ms Coleiro Preca yesterday stressed that the agreement was great news for patients but it showed poor management and planning.

The government, she said, had recently employed three new ophthalmologists in hospital but it was not yet clear whether the cataract surgeries at the private hospitals would be carried out by surgeons in government employ.

When asked whether the specialists would be paid according to private hospital rates or normal government rates, Dr Cassar said: “The government has not entered into the merits of the rates paid to specialists.”

He said operations in the private sector would be carried out by specialists engaged directly by the private clinics. Any pre- or post-operative treatment will be carried out at Mater Dei.

Ms Coleiro Preca also referred to recent comments made by Mater Dei’s new CEO Joseph Caruana who, in an interview with The Sunday Times, said he believed that, from a business point of view, the provision of free health services was “definitely not sustainable”.

He later issued a statement saying he was tasked to implement government policy to maintain free health care. Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi and Dr Cassar have both since stressed that the government would ensure health services remained free.

Despite these reassurances, Ms Coleiro Preca said she was not convinced since facts spoke otherwise and Mr Caruana’s comments made her believe “there is something fishy in the air”.

This was not the first time the Nationalist government had spoken about the unsustainability of free health care, she pointed out.

She said that, indirectly, patients were already paying for some health services as they had to fork out money to buy pills that were out of stock even though they were entitled to have them for free. Due to the length of waiting lists some patients had no choice but to turn to private hospitals and pay for their surgery.

The Health Ministry said the government had boosted prevention services and health care services in the community and increased the number of free medicines patients were entitled to.