Parliamentary Secretary for Health Chris Fearne in his adjournment speech, announced that government plans to allow family doctors to access a patient's information (such as test results, medication etc), with the permission of the patient.

He mentioned that this is already available to Health Centre doctors and that all precautions in relation to data protection are being taken.

Dr Fearne mentioned that over the past years, governments concentrated their work in the healthcare field on Mater Dei Hospital. 

"This was to the detriment of prevention, healthy living and primary care. If, over the past 20 years other hospitals were given attention, then maybe we would be somewhere".

He mentioned spatial problems at Mater Dei, and problems at St Luke's and Karen Grech. "We focussed everything on one hospital and left the rest go".

"Now we are trying to help these hospitals reach the same level as Mater Dei to have the same level of care".

"While increasing services in hospitals, we will also focus on Primary and Community care, as well as prevention".

The Parliamentary Secretary mentioned that government is trying to empower Family Doctors, by having given them the faculty to refer patients to physiotherapists for example. He spoke of the important role they have played over the years.

"2,600 people were referred to physiotherapists through their Family Doctors," he said, adding that the same service has been introduced when referring patients for a bone density test. "The waiting list for this test reduced from a year-and-a-half to a month".

"We also gave the power to community care doctors to immediately send patients to take X-rays, and we have installed digital x-ray machines in some Community Care centres like Qormi. "This means the specialist has the ability to phone the specialist at Mater Dei, sending the digital copy, and receive advice then and there".

"Community Health Centre doctors can also place a cast around a broken bone".

He mentioned that patients who require a schedule five card, for certain illnesses, like high blood pressure, the community care doctor himself can refer the patient which would seriously reduce the waiting time.

"We want to introduce a system where a number of patients who are in a stable condition however still need go to hospital for check-ups, would be able to be seen by their family doctor and be paid for by government". This would reduce the amount of out-patients in the waiting room and costs less than them having to be seen at Mater Dei due to reduced overheads, he explained.