I have been hearing about the bad state of affairs at Mater Dei Hospital for many months. Not hearsay but first-hand accounts by ordinary people distressed at how family members had been treated. However, just how bad things are only became fully apparent when I read the health system’s own Hospital Activity Report – January to June 2015.
This document is not meant to be classified information. Nor did it come into my possession through anyone’s disloyalty to the public service. Hospital activity reports were first introduced under the previous government. They used to be much longer documents and included pages with suggestions for better management and quality of service to reduce the discomfort and suffering of patients.
The activity report I published during Tuesday’s press conference is not as comprehensive. Still, it states clear facts which Joseph Muscat’s government cannot challenge.
The Parliamentary Secretary for Health, Chris Fearne, first tried to discredit my arguments. But how can you argue against your own numbers? So he then asked the acting CEO at Mater Dei to spin out a justification for the alarming statistics.
It’s a matter of concern that the acting CEO thinks nothing of diving into the partisan arena. It’s even worse that he has used arguments – he said I’m not a doctor and therefore cannot understand the issues – that would be laughed off in the rest of Europe, where health portfolios are often held by non-doctors. It should be obvious (except perhaps to a government whose trademark is to reward incompetence) that my advisers include very highly regarded professionals in the medical field.
That said, the personal attack is a compliment in its own way. As Margaret Thatcher once remarked: “I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.”
Incidentally, there is an acting CEO at our national hospital because the actual CEO (another handpicked political appointee) is nowhere to be seen. He is on a somewhat long holiday while the hospital is facing “unprecedented strain” (in the words of MUMN, the nurses’ union) and blocked beds have increased to an “unprecedented 140” (in the words of MAM, the doctors’ association).
Those who accuse others of not being fit for purpose are proving to be so themselves
No wonder the hospital’s activity report was kept under wraps.
Fearne tried to justify the secrecy by telling (selected) members of the press that: “The report is a tool used by the management to gauge the current situation at the hospital. The report wasn’t published because it is designed to be understood by managing staff. If it were designed for the general public, it would contain different language and perhaps even data to avoid alarming people or shedding a bad light on things.”
With those words, Fearne gave away more than he meant to. In any case, the report doesn’t shed a bad light on “things”. It shines its cold light on Muscat’s government and the empty words of Tagħna Lkoll.
On health, like on much else, Muscat and his marketing team sold the electorate a big lie. Section five of Labour’s electoral manifesto is dedicated entirely to health. It is headed with the grand declaration: “We believe excellent free health service is the people’s right”.
The section on Mater Dei states that a new Labour government would work on making the hospital management become more efficient, particularly in sensitive areas like the emergency department and where numbers are huge, like the outpatients’ section.
Please note: The manifesto actually states that a plan of action would be implemented immediately. Whatever happened to that plan?
There never was a roadmap. The odes to excellence and patients’ rights were written by vote-hunters and power-grabbers who were not primarily interested in the real problems of the sick, the vulnerable and the elderly. It is difficult to stomach those words today, knowing the distress of those patients and their families who are daily let down by the deteriorating health service. The sweet talk was not only untrue, it was callous.
Public perception is catching up with reality. There is a deep sense of panic within the Ministry of Health’s corridors. Those who accuse others of not being fit for purpose are proving to be so themselves. Since they cannot manage and control the issues, they are trying to control the news. Facts and figures are sacred, and no amount of Labour spin can change them.
Journalists are being hand-picked while the truth is brushed away. What was once a regular hospital report is becoming a top-secret document. We can now expect a witch-hunt for someone, anyone, to blame for my getting access to the report.
Sadly, none of that does anything to change the cruel truth. Well over two years since the general election, things at Mater Dei are getting worse, not better. The nurses say so. The doctors say so. The government’s own internal numbers say so.
Claudette Buttigieg is shadow minister for health.