Nurses’ union wants new 500-bed hospital
More beds are needed for patients and the elderly, says the MUMN.
The nurses’ union has fleshed out its calls for more hospital beds and called for a post-election government to start planning to build a 500-bed hospital for acute care.
The 500 hypothetical beds would complement the 825 beds at Mater Dei Hospital, which the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses has repeatedly insisted is too small for Malta’s needs.
That claim had previously been rejected by Health Minister Joe Cassar, who has said that Mater Dei was deemed big enough by consultants from Johns Hopkins University.
MUMN’s call for a new hospital was the most eye-catching point in a 13-point list of proposals it made to political parties yesterday.
And according to the union, the 500 hospital beds will need to be buttressed by a further 500 beds for the elderly in residential hospitals over the next five years.
The union also wants greater emphasis to be placed on patient rights, with an independent body tasked with investigating complaints and patients being afforded freer access to their own medical records and to a second medical opinion. The MUMN’s proposals suggest staggering outpatients’ appointments and introducing quotas on the number of patients consultants see on any given day.
They also call for waiting lists for elective surgeries to be managed by a central office, rather than left up to individual consultants’ diaries. This, the MUMN suggested, would cut down on waiting times and stop consultants from bumping frequent private clients up their waiting lists.
Some parts of the proposal document are unlikely to go down well with the Health Ministry.
“The development of health centres was literally nonexistent” in this legislature, the document argues, before going on to suggest all health centres should remain open and offer a GP service.
MUMN’s document also criticises the government’s Pharmacy of Your Choice scheme – through which patients who are entitled to free medicine can collect it at their local pharmacy – and lambasts it for encouraging medicine hoarding and drug wastage.
Private doctors and GPs should be empowered to modify or stop medical treatment freely available to patients, the MUMN has proposed.
Currently, only consultants can alter such prescriptions.
Moreover, according to the union, further infrastructural investment is needed at Mount Carmel hospital to be accompanied by “drastic changes” in the entire system of community mental care.
The MUMN document also suggests modifying the tendering process for government purchases of medicines as well as bringing Gozitan health services within the Health Ministry’s remit, rather than the Gozo ministry as was presently the case.
Questions sent to the Health Ministry seeking a reaction to the MUMN’s proposals remained unanswered at the time of writing.
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Maria Vassallo
Aug 15th 2012, 19:03
QUOTE:
Nurses’ union wants new 500-bed hospital
More beds are needed for patients and the elderly, says the MUMN.
The nurses’ union has fleshed out its calls for more hospital beds and called for a post-election government to start planning to build a 500-bed hospital for acute care.
VERY INTERESTING!
If this is the objective truth, but why build a 500-bed hospital for acute care when we have a solid St Luke's Hospital?
From where are we employing the medical and nursing staff? Who will finance it? The European and Maltese tax-payer?
What a brilliant idea!
What does the JM-PL has to say about all this?
Victor Rodenas
Aug 15th 2012, 12:12
Putting males and females together in a ward is something of the very past,surely not something of a state of the art hospital.This is what about special people should be talking about.
Angelo Vassallo
Aug 15th 2012, 11:23
@ J Cauchi @ A Tonna @ Lawrence Fenech
Anki bl-aktar proposti banali, bhal dik ta' pawlu pace, li jinbena sptar iehor ta' 500 sodda, tiehdu l-okkazzjoni biex tikkritikaw il-gvern.
@ "dear leader joseph muscat u karmenu vella (qabel li jispicca jikteb il-programm elettorali)
Il-lejburist lawrence fenech issuggerilkom li tinkludu l-bini sptar ta' 500 sodda jekk tkunu fil-gvern. Ikun interessanti hafna insiru nafu jekk il-partit lejburisti jaqbilx ma din il-proposta banali ta' pawlu pace tal-mumn.
Victor Vella
Aug 15th 2012, 11:20
This is another PN scandal of incompetency, corruption and squandering of the people`s monies. Instead of making the right things, they make things right and the taxpayers have to suffer the reactive attitude of irresponsible regime . The brand of GONziPN.
Tonio Bone
Aug 15th 2012, 11:20
I would like to take a point from each of the three comments below:
@ J Cauchi - how can you determine if when planning a hospital you have enough beds? Do you build a hospital with 5000 beds just to make sure?
@ A Tonna - too late dear friend. St.Lukes should have been brought down and rebuilt, block by block, from Day 1. There was no need to spend Lm 280 million (that's Maltese Liri not Euros) and was all that virgin agricultural land.
@ L Fenech - it will not be included in any parties electorale manifesto simply because we do NOT have the dosh to build one!
If anything, the government should take over, for example, the ailing St.Philips Hospital, revamp it and uttilize it as a specialized wing for Mater Dei!
People do not realize we spent Euro 500 million on a hospital from money which we simply did not have and which arguably we could not afford.
It's like the father of a family needing a car to go to work but instead of buying an entry Fiat Punto he gets a Mercedes E-Class.......! Bad admin and planning if you ask me, all for the interest of this or that one......!
Francis Sammut
Aug 15th 2012, 15:28
Mr. T. Bone, I'm sorry but of course you can determine when planning a hospital how many beds one would need. Didn't we already know that there were already a shortage of beds at St. Lukes hospital? Of course we knew, but the government thought that the new hospital is to have less not more beds! Go figiure that out! I ask, was that wise? If it wasn't for the 1996/98 government ( and no I'm no apologist) which increased the number of beds today we will be in a much worse situation.
You said we simply do not have the money to build another hospital - agree to a point. The government didn't have the money not even on the eve when work started on the city gate project, aka new Parliament, but it still thought that Malta should go ahead! With reference to bad planning, I agree !00%.
J Cauchi
Aug 15th 2012, 17:45
Mr Tonio Bo0ne had asked me how can I determine rthe number of beds when planning a hospital. The answer is quite simple. You consider the problems you had with the old hospital and plan for them. St Luke's Hospital catered for 1000 patients and still there was the same problem,not as acute as this, but it existed. So how on earth can you build a new hospital with less than half of the beds at St Luke's Hospital? That is not called planning; it's called madness.
Tonio Bone
Aug 15th 2012, 18:07
Francis, I was always of the view that St.Luke's should have been revamped. There was no need to have a hospital with a massive footprint like Mater Dei. We could have got more beds and spent less.
I reiterate that we did not have the money then, and we do not have the money now, Parliament Project included. Massive infrastructural projects should be the burden of the private sector not the government, we just do NOT have the financial resource to undertake them. We already struggle with our recurrent expenditure never mind building a Euro 500 million hospital, and perhaps spend another similar some (with today's valuation) for a second.
Frankly, I do not know how competent the consultants our administration engages are. We have a hospital that is not meeting the demand, and we have a power generation system that is not meeting demand as well. Those are two fundamental pillars of our everyday lives and we are struggling!
J Cauchi
Aug 15th 2012, 10:12
Th whole problem is that Mater Dei has not enough beds. This is due to a bad planning by the Government when constructing Mater Dei. The Government used to say that the problem is due to social cases. This proved wrong. Malta needs at least 750 beds. I have no intention to go into the merits of whether the Government should build a new hospital or not. The question is that a problem exists and something should be done quickly as patients are suffering. On other certain issues raised by Mr Paul Pace I do not agree and I don't think that they fall under his Union's competence. They are too complicated issues and they should be considered by the responsible authorities. I do not think it is wise for the Union of Nurses to get involved in them.
A Tonna
Aug 15th 2012, 09:57
Bring down St Luke's and rebuild it! This is the infrastructure that Malta needs not a topless theatre and new parliament !
Lawrence Fenech
Aug 15th 2012, 09:31
I personally thing that this 500 bed hospital should be inlcuded in the PL program for the coming elections. GonziPN has proven that he cannot handle the maltese taxes for the benefit of the maltese population, too many millions have gone down the draiin since his political tenure, he was not born to be a politician neither to lead.
Please choose the reason of your report below: