News • 21 September 2003

Hospital customer care indifferent about missing medical file saga

Kurt Sansone
It was meant to be a routine check-up for a female patient at St Luke’s outpatient clinic on Tuesday, only it turned out to be a terribly frustrating experience after hospital staff broke the news that her medical file was lost.
The doctor on duty refrained from treating the patient without knowledge of her complex medical history and past blood results. And while nurses searched for the file to no avail, the patient was left waiting for four long hours.
This is the second time this patient, whose name is not being published to protect her confidentiality, has had to endure the frustration of a missing medical file. The first time, the patient’s file was discovered in a ward that had nothing to do with the patient’s medical condition.
Last Tuesday medical staff told the patient that if the file is found they will contact her for a fresh appointment.
To add insult to injury, when the patient and her husband went to lodge a complaint with the customer care unit, the person behind the desk was anything but reassuring. "What can we do?" was the terse response to the patient’s complaint.
It is a known fact the medical records at St Luke’s Hospital are filed in an archaic way and it is not the first time that medical files have gone missing after being misplaced.
kurt@maltamag.com