We have been told that the Mater Dei Hospital will be opened, as scheduled, on 1 July. What is still unclear is whether the hospital will be fully functional as from that day onwards or whether only parts of it will be operational.
The new hospital at Tal-Qroqq must have been born under an unlucky star. Twelve years after the first construction started of what was then known as the San Raffaele Hospital, the hospital is still in the making, now as the Mater Dei Hospital.
All throughout these years, the complex has been the centre of controversy as the designs have been redrawn more than once, the costs have escalated and the programmed opening put off a number of times. The dispute between the government and the opposition on how much the project will eventually cost is still on, and the difference between the two figures being given is rather large.
The controversy did not stop when the date was set, and only recently the Malta Labour Party took advantage of different interpretations given by Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi and Health Minister Louis Deguara as to what will actually happen on 1 July to continue criticising the government’s plans.
The cancellation of a call for tenders for an integrated health information system for the hospital, on the advice of the attorney general following allegations of irregularities, has not helped either.
And, as if all this was not enough, it was only last week that the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses threatened to boycott the migration process from St Luke’s Hospital to Tal-Qroqq unless the union is involved in discussions planning the said process.
The building of a new hospital, especially one that will be “world class” to use Parliamentary Secretary Tonio Fenech’s words, is a massive project. But it should not have taken so much to complete, more than it took the Knights of St John to build the whole of Valletta, to quote Opposition Leader Alfred Sant.
Health authorities have been planning the migration process to the new hospital for quite some time, and the more the opening date approaches, the more the public should be informed about what is going to happen. An information campaign should be drawn up to tell the people all the necessary details that they need to know, especially if they have an emergency in those eventful days.
It is equally important for the health authorities to involve all the different sectors of employees who give their services in hospital to know what is going on and how the migration process is to be carried out. These people are there to give their services and expertise to people who need hospital treatment, and therefore they should be the first to know what will take place and how they are to deal with any new systems that are to be implemented.
Doctors, nurses, midwives, orderlies, security officers, ambulance drivers and all other staff who will be working in the hospital need to know their whereabouts well right from the first day. It is a well-known fact that a few minutes, perhaps even seconds, can save a person’s life, and therefore all the employees involved in the running of the new hospital ought to know Mater Dei hospital as well as they now know St Luke’s Hospital.
A hospital is a good hospital not because of its air-conditioned wards, state-of-the-art design and the ample parking space. Of course, these help, but the most important aspect of a hospital is the service that is given to the patients.
It is therefore imperative for the health authorities to keep all unions representing hospital employees well-informed on the migration process, as ultimately they will be the ones who will be doing the work there.