The new Patients’ Charter would be nothing more than an “idealistic wish list” without the necessary investment, according to the Medical Association of Malta.

MAM general secretary Martin Balzan told the Times of Malta that while the set of patient rights and responsibilities, which includes specific time frames within which people should receive treatment, were not unattainable, the healthcare sector needed bolstering if the objectives were to be reached.

MAM says time frames within which people should receive treatment were not unattainable.

Launched by Health Minister Chris Fearne last week, the charter will start being implemented next year and envisages a two- to four-hour waiting time at the Accident and Emergency Department and a maximum waiting period of 12 weeks for specialist-led treatment or intervention in urgent cases.

“It’s great that we should aspire to achieve these targets but how are we supposed to get there? The problem that has persisted, and remains, as I have said in the past, is that the resources allocated for healthcare are inadequate,” Dr Balzan, a veteran respiratory physician, said.

He referred to the annual Hospital Activity Report, published earlier this year, which showed that demand for services at Mater Dei Hospital was increasing by about seven per cent annually. That growth, he pointed out, was not being met with a commensurate increase in resources, both human and otherwise, and leading to a “deficit in care”.

Aside from new timelines, the charter lists responsibilities for patients, among them the obligation to attend appointments.

This newspaper reported last year that patients had not shown up for about 60,000 doctor’s appointments at Mater Dei last year. Fresh data shows that, on average, between one fifth and one third of appointments at health clinics and Mater Dei respectively were missed when patients did not advise in advance that they would not be able to make it. This, Mr Fearne said, could not be tolerated in a free healthcare system. He said that, for far too long, patients had not been able to challenge their doctors who, in some instances, could even be patronising. This had to change, Mr Fearne insisted.

The problem is that the resources allocated for healthcare are inadequate

Patients should have a right to access their personal file and records and change their consultant if they so wished. Although this was possible at the moment, the process to do so has been described as prohibitive with patients required to get the go-ahead from the same consultant they wished to change.

The Nationalist Party has described the charter as an attempt to distract the public from revelations that expired medicines were administered to hospital patients.

Shadow health minister Claudette Buttigieg said the charter did not bind anyone and its clauses were not compulsory.

Patients deserved the best treatment possible rather than expired medicines, she said.

Earlier this month, this newspaper reported that patients in critical condition at the intensive therapy unit had been given expired antiviral medication Tamiflu. Hospital director Joseph Zarb Adami defended the decision saying this had been done with the blessing of the health authorities and that all patients had benefited from the treatment.