Mater Dei CEO Joseph Caruana address press about hospital's A&E increasing January figures
Bianca Caruana
The number of patients registered in at the Mater Dei Hospital Accident and Emergency department has increased by 9.3% or more than 1500 between December and January since 2009.
“It has taken a lot of hard work on behalf of all the hospital staff for each and every patient to be seen. In January alone, more than 300 patients were seen on a daily basis, which is 30 more than the hospital was treating daily in January 2010,” Mater Dei Hospital’s Chief Executive Officer Joseph Caruana said.
Caruana explained that the hospital had to take extraordinary measures to cope with the influx of patients in January and a new ward is expected to be built in June for another 60 patients.
“We had to change the system within the wards as well as processing methods to see to all patients. The work never stopped and although increased stress was generated ward doctors and A&E staff collaborated together to cope,” Caruana said.
Presenting figures to the press, Caruana said that the increases had been a common trend over the same period of time since 2009.
Referring to the collaborative effort with Karen Grech Hospital, Caruana said the hospital would not have been able to see to most of the patients.
“Patients needing lengthy rehabilitative treatment were sent to Karen Grech Hospital while beds at Mater Dei were made available for acute treatment,” Caruana said.
Caruana could not state whether there was a particular reason behind the increase but said it was not uncommon for numbers to increase around this period.
“We always have a percentage of patients, around 30%, going to A&E for reasons which are not classed as emergency. This percentage has not changed, but the absolute number has increased, which means the number of non-emergency patients has also increased,” Caruana said.
The percentage of patients given beds after being seen in A&E, amounts to around 23% of the total seen each month, according to the figures presented by Caruana.
“We are constantly trying to improve and change methods to deal with large numbers of patients efficiently and in a dignified way. But we could not have coped without the dedication of all the staff, doctors and nurses, as well as the unions involved,” Caruana stressed.