GozoNews.Com

To mark the completion of the migration process from St. Luke’s Hospital to Mater Dei Hospital, the Minister of Health, the Elderly and Community Care, the Hon. Louis Deguara addressed the press at Mater Dei.

The Minister said that he and the hospital authorities were very satisfied with the smooth and safe process without any major problems. This is a result of the thorough planning process carried out with all internal and external stakeholders prior to migration. The Minister added that the in-patient migration took 9 days to complete instead of the anticipated 10, without placing patient safety at risk. The Minister said he wanted to emphasise that there was no point when patient safety was jeopardised or compromised.

Presently there are almost 400 patients recovering or receiving treatment at Mater Dei Hospital. This number will continue to rise as elective surgeries resume with a full load in the coming days.

All acute services are now being offered from Mater Dei Hospital (Outpatients and Inpatients). Now work is underway to build a 280 bed Rehabilitation facility at Luqa next to St. Vincent De Paul Residence.

The process has been made possible through the hard work, commitment and dedication of all hospital staff who rose to the occasion and managed to run two hospitals simultaneously, while stocking the new hospital wards and closing down St. Luke’s Hospital.

At the same time, all essential hospital services were kept running on a 24 hour basis. Considering that no extra hospital staff were made available to cater for this special process, the achievement is even more remarkable. The Minister thanked all staff and all those who contributed to this success, including all volunteers and the general public.

The migration process was also made possible after government successfully concluded very important agreements with the Malta Medical Association and the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses.

The Minister made it clear that there was still room for fine tuning. The Migration process is now over, however a period of time is needed to settle down in the new hospital. The Mater Dei authorities are working hard to iron out some teething problems. These are normal problems that crop up when using a brand new facility for the first time. Three particular issues are:

· Parking rates and efficiency in traffic management

· Distribution of staff meals

· Patient entertainment system

“We have already achieved a lot by moving to Mater Dei. Now we need to strive for excellence, even in research infrastructures, and to improve waiting times. There is a lot of work still to be done in this regard and we are committed to reduce these waiting times,” the Minister said.

Mater Dei cannot be seen in isolation. This hospital is a link in the chain of important measures undertaken to improve our hospital and care services.

The fight against cancer is a top priority for this government. Zammit Clapp will be transformed into a specialised Oncology Centre which can accommodate twice the number of beds (26 to 60) currently at Boffa Hospital. This requires a substantial investment in new medical equipment.

Some facts and figures:

In all, 411 patients and 9 babies were transferred safely from St. Luke’s Hospital to Mater Dei during the entire process.

During the 36 hour period following the start of operation of the Accident and Emergency Department at Mater Dei, there were almost 2,000 transactions on the Pneumatic Tube System.

There were almost 13,000 calls answered by Linja Mater Dei staff since the service started on October 22nd. We have received reports that some people might be experiencing problems to get through and this is also being addressed.