A new plan to improve the situation at Mater Dei Hospital’s Accident and Emergency Department was unveiled yesterday.
The intention, according to Health Parliamentary Secretary Chris Fearne, is to reduce waiting time for patients from the present seven-hour average to four hours, in line with international standards.
Acknowledging that waiting times are one of the major problems in the public health system, an issue that “has been present for years”, Mr Fearne said that the new five-point plan would be implemented over a 12-month period with an investment of some €1.2 million, mostly due to additional staff levels.
“This will not be an easy task but we are confident that with all stakeholders on board we will be making a serious attempt to tackle the problem,” he said.
“If, at the end of this exercise, we won’t reach our targets, we will have to make further efforts, revise our plans further and move to another phase,” Mr Fearne said.
The plan, explained by Emergency Department chairman Mary Rose Cassar, is divided into five phases involving both structural and medical changes.
Firstly, the physical layout of the department will be restructured to make better use of the space so medical staff could have a better overview of what is going on.
A new section, dedicated solely to children, will be opened so young patients can be completely separated from others. Those who call at the emergency department unnecessarily – 50 per cent of the 115,000 annual visitors – will be treated in other areas so they will not occupy core areas.
A new medical contact point will be established to assess earlier the needs of arriving patients and decide on the attention needed faster.
New technology will be installed to help patients receive faster attention including real-time blood test results.
Health Minister Konrad Mizzi said the reform at the emergency department was one of four key areas the government was working on in the health sector.
The others were improvementsin waiting lists for operations at the hospital, addressing the out-of-stock medicine issue and tackling the lack of beds.