Having relatives looking after convalescents worries employers

Employers could be hard hit if workers take time off to care for relatives going through post-surgery recovery, business leaders said.

"This could be a serious threat to small businesses," the director general of the Chamber for Small and Medium Enterprises - GRTU, Vince Farrugia said.

When a self-employed person was sick, the whole operation tended to grind to a halt, let alone if they had to take care of recuperating relatives, Mr Farrugia said.

His words come in reaction to a statement made on Sunday by the Parliamentary Secretary for Health, Joe Cassar, who called on relatives of patients recovering from operations but able to leave hospital to care for them at home so that they can free up needed hospital beds, even if this would require taking leave from work.

Dr Cassar yesterday stood by what he said and expanded on it. Patients, especially those living alone, he explained, should not stay in an acute hospital simply because they were not yet self-sufficient. This also called for strong community care, which, he admitted, was limited, as well as an increase in rehabilitation beds.

Dr Cassar said on Sunday he was not only referring to post-operative patients but to all those who no longer needed hospital care. "It could take months for a patient to get back to normal after surgery. Should he remain in hospital all that time?"

But in messages that poured in on timesofmalta.com, readers asked how the government could ask taxpaying citizens to take over the care of patients from the state. One asked whether any relative could provide the same care and supervision provided by health professionals and another wondered whether workers should "take a sickie" to take care of relatives.

"There are already cases where working mothers call in sick if their children are feeling unwell," Malta Employers Association president Pierre Fava said.

If people were also expected to take care of recovering relatives, he added, it would be tantamount to the government shifting the burden back onto the community. "We have spent a lot of money to build a state-of-the-art hospital and this should be able to handle post-operative patients as well," he said.

Mr Fava said that if the government failed to plan well for the country's ageing population, it was its responsibility.

"People pay taxes to have a health service which is proficient and adequate for the population. Is he (Dr Cassar) saying that our health system is inadequate? That is something I cannot accept," he said.