Like most countries that provide free medical services at the point of delivery, Malta’s general hospital is suffering from chronic overcrowding. Up to some time ago this problem was most acute in the winter months when flu epidemics necessitate the hospitalisation of many people, especially the elderly. But this summer the overcrowding at Mater Dei Hospital reached ‘unprecedented’ levels.
The reasons behind the chronic overcrowding at Mater Dei are well known: increasing demand for inpatient medical services by an ageing population, an insufficient number of beds and numerous ‘bed blockers’ where elderly patients are kept in hospital because they have no one to care for them at home.
There are other reasons which ironically are the result of the authorities’ willingness to reduce the long waiting lists for elective surgery. Mater Dei’s acting CEO, Joseph Zarb Adami, confirmed to the Times of Malta that this summer a number of patients opted to have elective surgery in the warm months. This has forced the hospital management to house patients in the day surgery recovery area. Dr Zarb Adami did not mince words: “It’s definitely a situation of concern. I’ve never seen the hospital so packed before.”
An important aspect of this crisis is the strain it is causing medical and paramedical professionals.
The Medical Association of Malta says that 140 elderly patients are blocking 60 per cent of acute medical care beds. These are mainly social cases and the causes are attributed by the doctors union to “lack of planning and investment in the geriatric sector”.
The nurses’ union is no less alarmed by the negative developments in the management of Mater Dei.
The Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses wrote to the permanent secretary at the Health Ministry to express concern over the increase in pressure at Mater Dei that had to resort to open extra “contingency” and “escalation” wards to cope with demand.
One needs hardly highlight the negative effect of increasing the stress of hundreds of medical and paramedical staff that give their all when treating the patients in their care.
Mater Dei’s management as well as the politicians who are responsible for providing this critically important medical service must no longer depend on the heroics of medical professionals to make sure that the hospital continues to provide at least an adequate medical service.
New investment is required to boost capacity, sort out increasing demand for geriatric accommodation, recruit more medical professionals and install modern equipment to provide better diagnostic and treatment facilities.
This will all cost money. To move away from apparent crisis management mode, Mater Dei needs the political will of both the government and the Opposition to engage in sensible consensus-building dialogue that will map out how this investment can be made and how it will be financed.
Many understandably argue that politicians are more concerned with rubbishing each other’s plans to improve the lives of thousands of people rather than work together to find solutions that, so far, have eluded us.
A ‘free’ medical service at the point of delivery is an achievement of past generations of politicians of different political creeds and who believed that medical care for everybody was a fundamental right for all.
Unfortunately, this medical service is now creaking, partly as a result of their own success but partly also because politicians may lack the political will to put these ‘free’ services on a sound financial base that will see Mater Dei follow a sound business model.