Primary healthcare funding remains below required levels with a lack of funds making it hard to implement national health strategies, a National Audit Office report has found. 

The NAO report found that many existing practices, most notably the way in which GPs were deployed to health centres, were not cost-efficient and that management information limitations hindered the Primary Health Care Department's planning and monitoring functions. 

Throughout 2014, approximately one in every four patients treated at Mater Dei's A&E department could have been dealt with by health centres. 

The report also noted that GP consultations at public health centres cost the government more than the fees charged for private GP consultations - while public consultations cost public coffers an average of €10.99 per visit in the two-week period measured in 2014, private consultations cost an average of €9.37. 

Malta spent an estimated €10.3 million to provide GP services at nine health centres in 2014. 

There was also a significant imbalance in the average costs across health centres, the report found: the average unit cost at Floriana health centre, for instance, was 54 per cent higher than that at Mosta health centre. The NAO attributed this difference to an imbalance between GP deployment and patient demand. 

It also found that IT systems were not optimal and sometimes not available at all, making it difficult for patient statistics and accurate service costs to be made available.

The report noted that primary healthcare's GP function was broadly adhering to national strategic measures, and that users were generally very satisfied with the service they received. 

It however found that there was room for improvement. The challenge the government faced, the NAO said, was in making primary healthcare's GP function more patient-centric "without a shift in funding relativities, which reflect more realistically the long-term socio-economic advantages of investments in primary health care." 

One way of doing this, the NAO said, was of further exploring collaborations between the public and private sector. 

The NAO also called on the government to shift more health sector resources towards primary healthcare, arguing that doing so would lead to a high rate of return in terms of social and economic benefits. 

Read the NAO report in its entirety by clicking here.