Steward Health Care has not yet unveiled a promised master plan for the physiotherapy department at the old St Luke's Hospital because it needs to “dedicate enough time to planning in order to get it right”.

Pressed to provide specific dates when the master plan will be published, a spokeswoman for the US hospital operator would only say this would be available “within a few weeks or months”.

“It is hard to give an exact date right now because there will be many ideas presented before we settle on a final version. We expect this to be completed within a few weeks or months, however, we want to dedicate enough time to planning in order to get it right,” she said.

The hospital operator was contacted as the Malta Union of Nurses and Midwives issued directives to its members at the department, instructing them not to see any new patients after promises to upgrade the clinic were not kept.

More than 300 patients a day

The department sees about 300 patients every day, more than 75,000 a year.

Yet it has not seen an upgrade in years, with physiotherapists being forced to make the best of what is available, including having to use a corridor riddled with broken tiles during sessions with patients learning to walk again, the Times of Malta was told.

The only treadmill available in the department has been out of order for months, with the union arguing that most services that should be offered are “pending” due to poor infrastructure.

'More like a museum'

The union’s president, Paul Pace, told Times of Malta that “time stood still from the day the public-private partnership was launched” and, as a result, the physiotherapy department looked “more like a museum than a modern-functioning facility”.

According to the Steward spokeswoman, the operator committed to a refurbishment of the space and is “working with the relevant hospital stakeholders to see that works begin as soon as possible”.

“Steward considers the planning phase of its work here in Malta to be of the utmost importance in order to develop and build facilities which not only meet the needs of the current population but of populations to come, in a way which maintains cultural integrity of the sites, while also providing our clinical staff with facilities that are comfortable to work in.

“Once finalised, details around the master plan and timelines will be made public,” the spokeswoman said.

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