A recently-introduced tracking system at Mater Dei Hospital’s Emergency Department has helped reduce patients’ waiting times “very satisfactorily” down to an average of four hours from the erstwhile times which could drag on much longer, Parliamentary Secretary Chris Fearne said this evening.

Replying to parliamentary questions by Claudio Grech and Mario Galea (PN), who had asked how a directive by the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses had affected the system, Mr Fearne said there 1,590 house visits in October and 1,649 in November.

He said health centres had received 47,072 visits last October, 302 of which had been referred to the Emergency Department at Mater Dei. In November 49,165 people had visited the health centres and 191 had been referred to the emergency department.

Mr Fearne said the the tracking system was about performance, not patients, and should not be affected by the MUMN directive.

Commenting on the number of people self-referring to the Emergency Department, he said it was understandable that those with real emergencies would immediately go to hospital.

The fact that the previous administration had sought to cut costs by keeping health centres closed after certain times in the evenings and on weekends also helped to explain previous trends, but with the present administration having extended health centres’ opening hours, an appreciable number of self-referrals to emergency could have first gone to the health centres.

In reply to another question by Mr Grech, the Parliamentary Secretary said that in October last year Mater Dei's Customer Care Section received 78 complaints. Another 73 were received in November.

The section also received 360 requests in October and 260 in November.

There were no pending cases.