Government has published the conclusions of the inquiry regarding the Gozo Hospital helicopter transfer incident, and invited PN MP Chris Said to review the full inquiry.

A statement by the health Ministry explained that ethical considerations and data protection of the patient in question do not permit for the full publication of the report. It read however, that government will allow PN MP Chris Said to see the full report confidentially in order for him to be able to assure the public that good practices and procedures are being followed in this case.

Said had, during a Parliamentary adjournment speech, alleged that there was an effort to cover-up the incident last August, where a helicopter was meant to be always available to bring patients to Malta from Gozo, but was missing, allegedly leading to the man's death when he went through cardiac arrest.

Said had said that he knew that on 24 August, at 10.30am, doctors had ordered that the man be sent be taken by helicopter to Mater Dei hospital. He said that it then became known that there wasn't a helicopter available, and that this was noted as a minute in the file of the patient. The patients was moved to the Coronary Care Unit of the Gozo hospital, he said.

He alleged that the helicopter arrived 7 hours later, and that the Gozo hospital CEO took photos to try and make it look as though it was available, to discredit Said's Facebook post on the issue.

The conclusions of the inquiry however, read that the helicopter was available. Said argued that the inquiry was never published, and said that the health minister became complicit in a cover-up, adding that the inquiry was not launched to find out what went wrong, but to cover-up what happened. He called on the minister to publish the inquiry. Today the ministry has partially done so.

The full published conclusions of the report are found below:

"The late Mr xxxxxx was afforded timely and excellent medical care both while in Gozo and in Malta. Medical care and treatment given was according to current established international guidelines and practices (European Society of Cardiology Guidelines for the Management of STEMI, 2017).

Protocols are in place to determine when patients need to be transferred from GGH to MDH.

Over the past years, before the air ambulance helicopter was available, the AFM helicopter was used to transfer patients between GGH and MDH.  This arrangement is now only being used when the air ambulance helicopter is out of service for either planned or unplanned maintenance.

Protocols are in place on what needs to be done once it is determined that a patient needs to be transferred from GGH to MDH.

Arrangements are in place to ensure that the helicopter/air ambulance is always available in case a transfer of patient is required.

It is considered normal practice to make use of the Gozo Channel ferry for the transfer of patients if GGH medical staff considers it necessary.

The procedures followed were in line with established normal practice and protocols.

No difficulties were encountered during the transfer of the patient from GGH to MDH.

Patient was only transferred to MDH once the attending physician considered that it was safe to do so.

The air ambulance helicopter was available when a decision was taken that the patient needed transfer to MDH.

The air ambulance helicopter was out of service for scheduled maintenance from the 22 to the 24 August and it was put back in operation according to plan.

The backup plan of when the air ambulance helicopter was out of service was active at during the time the helicopter was out of service.

Protocols' documents presented look very informal with no document management features, like reference numbers, who prepared the document, who approved the document, any revisions made, when the next review is due.

There is no formal and official agreement with the Gozo Channel ferry to give priority to transfer of patients; it is a traditional arrangement and understandably on a case-by-case basis.

The Board's recommendations are as follows:

• Formalise the protocols' documents.
• Formalise the agreement with the Gozo Channel Company Limited to give priority to transfer of patients.
• Have a set of Key Performance Indicators against what the service being offered to GGH for the transfer of patients can be measured. "