My opinion piece last week created quite a storm. The government had just boasted that more people were being admitted into Mater Dei. I asked whether that meant that more people were getting sick under Labour.
Joseph Muscat actually felt the need to quote me and compare me with two of his men, a Minister and his junior. Prime Minister, I am flattered but surely you are not saying that one Nationalist MP is worth two of yours?
My rhetorical question last week was loaded with sarcasm. You’d have thought it was obvious. Alas, it was taken literally. Of course people do not get sicker under Labour but many seem to be getting quite sick of Labour and their methods.
My question took aim at the skimpy Mater Dei Hospital report on which the government boasts were based. It is so short of detail that one wonders what it is actually trying to hide.
If government wanted to boast that more people have been admitted to Mater Dei because there was a huge surge in the number of surgical operations, then you would at least expect to find a table of the number of these surgeries in the activity report. Better still, if the numbers are so good, why not publish the full 2015 report on surgical operations at Mater Dei?
Throughout this week many healthcare professionals have spoken to me about how totally misleading, and consequently deceiving, the government’s numbers are.
Some of these professionals are actually claiming that the numbers may have been tampered with. I have asked the health minister to table in Parliament the full report for surgical operations. To date this report has not been tabled.
The reply I have been given is that a total of 52,889 “procedures” (note that vague word) were performed at Mater Dei in 2015 and that this is an increase of 16,914 interventions on 2008 when the hospital opened to the public.
The health minister, Konrad Mizzi, thinks he can fool us on what is going on at Mater Dei like he tried to fool us on Panama. What’s worse is that Chris Fearne, the junior health minister, seems to be joining this effort.
Now the devil is truly in the detail. And the detail here is the use of the word “procedures”. Looks like somebody thought it would be clever to inflate the numbers by adding interventions which were already taking place at Mater Dei but not previously included under the heading of surgical operations, like medical imaging interventions including MRIs.
The numbers published in the MDH Activity Report refer to admissions. From the same report we also know that the admissions from casualty have increased. Therefore, the data published suggests that the number of patients admitted for (elective, or planned) surgical operations, to reduce the waiting lists, has actually decreased.
The same Hospital Activity Report for 2015 shows two very clear no confidence votes in Joseph Muscat, Konrad Mizzi, Chris Fearne and their modus operandi.
94,357 patients (73%) who attended the Emergency department in 2015 have done so without a doctor’s referral. Although the report does not give the full details, many of these patients could have gone to a health centre but, apparently, they do not feel confident about the quality of primary health care. Perhaps they’re already perceiving the consequences of the failings in this sector, which has been abandoned by this government.
In the Outpatients department, 135,034 patients (28%) were walk-ins. These are patients who were on the waiting list to be seen by a consultant but who could not wait any more. So they skipped the queue by using the well-known stratagem of seeing the consultant privately first.
My favourite line in the report is the following: “It should be noted that comparisons with previous years should be interpreted with caution due to patient administrative system changeover at the end of 2013.” That line surely did not come from Castile.
(The article was written before yesterday's Cabinet reshuffle)