More family doctors will be giving a helping hand at Mater Dei Hospital's overstretched Emergency Department after the authorities renewed a scheme they had introduced last year.

The government had called on GPs to spend a few hours a week at the Emergency Department, seeing patients classified as category three. These patients do not need hospital treatment but still go to Emergency, pushing up waiting times.

Out of the 101,439 patients who went to the Emergency Department last year, almost a fifth were category three patients. Only 315 of the category three patients needed hospital admission, with all the others being discharged.

According to Health Minister Joe Cassar, the 10 family doctors who were helping out over the past months did a very good job. He pointed out that the majority of the patients who called at Emergency should have gone to their family doctor anyway rather than to hospital.

Two other doctors are now taking on the challenge and spending a few hours at the department, with the government renewing all their contracts for a year. And Dr Cassar said the call was still open. "The more we have, the better," he said, adding that it was up to the doctors to decide how many hours they spent and the times they were available.

Working in the Emergency Department has given the GPs an opportunity to further their training, seeing cases they would not have come across in their private clinic. Family doctor Michael Gonzi, who was among the doctors who started helping out about a year ago, said that the stint at Casualty improved his skills in dealing with orthopaedic cases, which made up a good chunk of category three patients.

Many of these patients could easily have been treated at health centres but because these do not have access to digitalised X-rays, patients were being sent to hospital. "Hopefully, with the upgrading of health centres and the introduction of digitalised X-rays, those patients will no longer go to hospital," he said.

More than two-thirds of patients who go to the Emergency Department are not sent there by their doctor. Only a third went to their GP or visited a health centre before going to hospital.

Emergency figures

• In 2009, a total of 101,439 patients went to the Emergency Department at Mater Dei Hospital. Almost 18,300 were admitted and the others discharged.

• Less than a fifth of patients who went to the department needed urgent medical treatment. Another 25,777 required semi-urgent care.

• Over 15,000 patients went to the Emergency Department with cardiac problems.

• There were over 1,000 women who went to Casualty because of gynaecology and obstetrics problems and nine were admitted to hospital.

• A total of 8,293 children went to Casualty but almost 7,000 were discharged.