Vitals Global Healthcare has sold its 30-year concession for the three state hospitals and Barts Medical School after experiencing significant financial difficulty, despite of repeated assurances from the owners that funds would be injected into the company, sources within the healthcare industry have told The Malta Independent.

The government has provided the company, which was entrusted with the provision of healthcare services through the Gozo, Karin Grech and St Lukes hospitals, with over €40 million in salaries, medicines, and other items over the last 21 months.

Now, the selling off of a state asset to VGH, a company that appears to be financially incapable of managing the project, especially seeing that it had no previous experience in the healthcare industry, threatens to dent the credibility of former health minister Konrad Mizzi and Prime Minister Joseph Muscat.

Mizzi, who had presented the project to much fanfare, has distanced himself from the project, being noticeably absent from the announcement of the sale despite being the Minister responsible for Private Public Partnerships, when he had even attended the ceremony which lifted the state guarantees in regards to Electrogas a few days prior.

Approached by The Malta Independent, Mizzi said that government is not involved at all with the negotiations, and insisted that the agreement between Vitals Global Healthcare and Steward Health Care System had been reached and was currently in a transition period, in spite of VGH telling the newsroom that they were “entertaining discussions” with the American healthcare company, while VGH Board Member Albert Fenech said that staff have been told that the sale is still in the negotiations stage.

The newsroom has since been informed that while an agreement of sale is in place, financial negotiations were still on-going.

It is believed that Steward are currently examining the contracts, that were heavily redacted when presented to the public, before committing fully to the agreement.

While a financial agreement is yet to be concluded, the newsroom understands that there is an understanding of price, however, the Ministry has been coy with revealing the figure after Fearne said he is unaware of the price of sale.

This should be a cause for concern, for while government has insisted that the deal remains strictly between two private entities, the government remains a significant shareholder of the project, which involves three state hospitals and directly affects its citizens.

A spokesperson for Chris Fearne said: “As was stated through a press release dated 21 December 2017, Steward Healthcare signed a share purchase agreement with Vitals Global Healthcare. The Health Ministry remains committed to ensure that high levels of health care are maintained thought out all hospitals and will be working with Steward to this end once the handover period is completed.”