A patient’s charter, just launched by Health Minister Chris Fearne, takes the island’s health service yet another step forward if it is rigorously followed. If not, it will be yet another useless exercise. Indeed, this is not the first time a patients’ charter was launched.
The proviso is being made for good reason. In the segment on safety, patients are told it is their responsibility not to take any medicinal that is expired. According to all advice generally given, this makes sense. Yet, for one reason or another, patients in intensive care were recently given expired medicine.
Whether or not the dispensing of expired medicine in this particular case was justified is not the point here, although the hospital authorities ought to have ensured that supplies do not run out. The point is that, while it is fine to have a patient’s charter, what counts most is that it is followed as strictly as possible.
Two of the people’s long-running concerns are the time taken for patients to be seen at the emergency ward and the long waiting time for specialist-led treatment or intervention in urgent cases. The government is now making commitments that should, if adhered to, make a significant improvement.
The hospital authorities are establishing time frames within which treatment has to be given. If, in the case of specialist-led treatment, the time frames are not met, patients will have the right to go to a private hospital at the government’s expense or in another European country in accordance with the Maltese cross-border healthcare regulations.
At between two and four hours, the time frame for treatment at the accident and emergency department would seem to be quite reasonable. Some have spent hours on end there. Unfortunately, overcrowding is often caused through the thoughtlessness of people who keep going to the emergency ward for ailments or injuries that can easily be seen to at health clinics.
The time frame for urgent cases is 12 weeks. This may appear too long at first but this is not applicable if deterioration is diagnosed, which must mean that, in such cases, treatment starts earlier.
A time frame of 18 months for non-urgent cases looks rather long. Maybe this, too, can, in time, be further reduced to a more reasonable period.
Also, while a patient has the responsibility to attend for a scheduled appointment, and to inform the authorities in time if unable to do so, it is unfair for the hospital authorities to postpone appointments at the last moment. Still, far too many appointments are being lost both at the main hospital and at clinics.
A right that is so often ignored, or not given enough attention, is that a patient ought to be treated with dignity.
Far too often, nurses in geriatric wards, and even in general wards, for that matter, strip the elderly of their dignity when they deal with them patronisingly or when they ignore their right to privacy.
The Health Ministry has said that the patients the government will eventually be sending for treatment in the privatised hospitals will enjoy the same rights as patients treated in State hospitals.
Concern has also been expressed as to whether or not patients receiving private care will have a right to complain to the Ombudsman.
Otherwise, there is much to be commended in the charter, which will be brought into force over a year because, as the minister said, there is still an element of catching up to do.