NAO warns Mater Dei Hospital over ‘unofficial’ Facebook page

National Audit Office voices concern over unofficial hospital Facebook page and says the public is being misled

Mater Dei Hospital has two Facebook pages, one official and the other not, the National Audit Office found.

“Since the general public might not be aware that two different MDH Facebook pages exist, the NAO is of the opinion that the MDH Customer Care department should promote the official MDH Facebook page by providing links on the MDH website and ensure that these pages are continuously updated,” the NAO said.

“Furthermore, the NAO is concerned on the presence of the unofficial MDH Facebook page and is of the opinion that the MDH Customer Care department should also seek advice on the presence of this page as it is misleading the general public in thinking that this is the official MDH Facebook page.”


This emerges from a report by the National Audit Office in its analysis of Mater Dei’s Information Technology system.

The audit sought to examine the hospital’s IT operations and, among others, to ensure that the systems maintain data integrity and safeguard assets.

The exhaustive 145-page report goes into a detailed audit of the system and also makes recommendations of how these could be improved, including through the employment of others workers.

Mater Dei Hospital is in the process of seeking a simpler way of storing patients’ health information as the Medical Records Department is running out of space. It is thus being recommended that information pertaining to the health of patients is scanned and saved electronically, reducing the volume of the physical files and the related storage space required.

The hospital holds a considerable amount of personal data and has a retention and disposal policy personal clinical patient data that exists at the Medical Records Department. However, MDH lacks an internal policy for the secure disposal of any confidential data stored electronically.

The audit found that, even though the Clinical Patient Administration System (CPAS) application was launched in 2013, the old Patient Administration System (PAS) is still running and hosted at MITA’s MDH data centre.

Moreover, the PAS application is not being kept in sync with the current CPAS application: only some data, such as patient demographics and future appointments, was migrated from the previous PAC application.

Users from different departments also reported a number of problems when updating the patient interface module on the CPAS, including the age of the patient which is not calculated automatically despite the date of birth having been inputted.

The NAO observed that certain users faced difficulties in finding available slots to be allocated in “a particular clinic”, when setting up an appointment. According to the NAO, this was the result of an overload in patient appointments, especially within the Outpatients Department.

“If a consultant requests that a particular patient is admitted to MDH for a follow-up on a particular date but all available slots on the CPAS are booked, the clinical nurse has to get in contact with the CPAS team to add a new slot,” the report found.

The NAO went on to recommend that MDH evaluates the possibility of providing specific users with further access in order to allocate new slots.

The myHealth application does not offer the functionality for parents or guardians to view medical records of children less than 14 years of age under their care. Patients over the 14 years of age may submit a request to view their medical record, making use of the new e-ID.