“Lengthy” hospital waiting lists led many patients to give up on more than 60,000 doctor’s appointments at Mater Dei last year, the general secretary of the Medical Association has claimed.
But the government has categorically denied Martin Balzan’s claims, saying they are “completely wrong” and not backed up by statistics.
Dr Balzan, who serves as general secretary of the Medical Association of Malta, said many patients were waiting more than a year before being examined by a specialist at the State hospital – a wait many felt was simply too long.
Reduced waiting lists were illusory, he said. “Patients are now waiting to be diagnosed, so the number waiting to be operated on has been reduced,” the veteran respiratory physician claimed, saying that the bottleneck had merely been shifted from surgery to the outpatient departments.
A Health Ministry spokesperson said the numbers gave the lie to Dr Balzan’s “mistaken” claims. While admitting that “more work needs to be done” to reduce outpatient waiting lists, they said that the number of new operations booked following diagnosis had risen substantially over the past years.
Last year, 20,000 new operations had been booked through outpatients, they said. This was twice the number of new operations booked in 2012, and four times the 5,000 booked back in 2008.
The Ministry spokesperson went on to list efficiency improvements across the hospital system: operations at Mater Dei had risen from 36,000 in 2008 to 45,000 in 2012 and 53,000 last year.
There were even greater increases in the numbers of MRIs, ultrasounds and cataract surgeries, the spokesperson added. The number of MRIs had quadrupled from 2008, ultrasounds had doubled to 33,000 last year and there were 3,800 cataract operations in 2015, compared to the 1,000 in 2008.
Dr Balzan said that the number of patients being referred to hospital by their GPs showed year-on-year growth while the number of new specialists had remained fairly stagnant. The number of additional specialists, he added, was a “trickle”.
This latter claim was also denied by the Health Ministry, with a spokesperson saying that “over the past two years in Mater Dei alone, there has been a net increase of 57 specialists over-and-above specialists brought in to replace retiring ones.”
Dr Balzan said that an analysis by the association had shown that between a third and a half of clinical patients did not turn up for outpatient appointments.
Many of these, he said, were “non-urgent” cases, whose symptoms subsided and no longer need diagnosis. However, others, he said, saw their condition deteriorate and wound up in the Accident and Emergency Department months before their appointment was set.
Others simply refused to wait and paid their way to a faster diagnosis by going to a private clinic.
“The people this situation hits the worst are those 100,000 people at risk of poverty. Those who can’t pay and just have to wait,” Dr Balzan said.
The Times of Malta called the hospital to make a fake appointment with a diabetes specialist. Posing as a prospective first-time referral, we were told the earliest available appointment would be in 11 months’ time.
The people this situation hits the worst are those 100,000 people at risk of poverty. Those who can’t pay and just have to wait
This newspaper learnt of the high number of missed first-time appointments with consultants after the data was handed over to the hospital management earlier this month. Separate figures on the number of missed follow-up sessions were still being compiled at the time of writing.
Sources within the hospital management confirmed that patients who were offered an appointment months after their original referral were either seeking private healthcare or ending up in A&E after their condition deteriorated. These were also considered ‘no shows’, the sources said.
The sources said multiple appointments were being set for the same time to avoid specialists having to wait for patients who did not show up. However, this means patients are often left waiting long past their scheduled appointment as sessions are double, or even triple, booked.
Furthermore, patients who gave up and left the hospital in such situations were added to the list of no-shows – despite their having turned up on time.
A Ministry spokesperson said that a plan to reduce outpatient waiting lists was in the pipeline, with the Ministry expecting it to be underway by “the second half of this year.”
According to the hospital’s activity report, published earlier this week, overall demand for treatment at the hospital is growing. The number of admissions last year reached 90,000, an increase of more than a third over 2008. And, with record tourist arrivals expected for the upcoming summer period, the next few months will be even busier at the State hospital.