Emergency care outsourcing to private hospitals suspended amid spending review

The Health Ministry has suspended the outsourcing of non-complicated emergency care to private hospitals as it reviews the effectiveness of the scheme, MaltaToday has learnt. 

Private hospitals were informed last week by email that the initiative was being suspended pending discussions with the ministry on the way forward. 

The suspension of the emergency care public-private partnership came after the Finance Ministry instructed all ministries to carry out spending reviews, sources with knowledge of the scheme said. 

“The public-private partnership was one of the budgetary items questioned by the Health Ministry since the number of patients treated at private hospitals fell below expectations,” the sources said. 

When the initiative kicked off in January 2025 it was intended to alleviate pressure from Mater Dei Hospital’s Emergency Department. Patients with non-complicated emergency cases would be redirected from Mater Dei or by the 1400 helpline operators for treatment to private hospitals. 

Three private hospitals—St Thomas Hospital, St James Hospital and the DaVinci Hospital—participated in the scheme with government reimbursing them the costs for treatment of patients referred to them by the specialised call centre. 

The only available numbers are those published in a parliamentary reply last October, which showed that between April 2025 and August of that same year, 1,530 patients were referred to private emergency services. This equates to an average of 300 patients per month across the three private hospitals. The cost to government stood at €512,000. 

But the number of patients treated in private hospitals pales into insignificance when compared to the around 300 patients per day that visit Mater Dei Hospital’s Emergency Department. 

“The public-private partnership was intended to ease the pressure on Mater Dei but the actual number of referrals was too few to make any difference, prompting the ministry to question its effectiveness,” the sources said. 

However, the reason for the lack of referrals to the private hospitals is unclear. There is no publicly-available data showing how many patients were treated in each of the different hospitals until the scheme’s suspension last week. 

In Budget 2026, the Health Ministry was allocated €15 million for outsourcing of medical services. Ostensibly, that figure covers all type of outsourcing, including surgical interventions to cut down on public healthcare waiting lists. 

Questions to the Health Ministry requesting the reasons for the private-public partnership suspension and information as to how many patients were referred to private hospitals and the cost to government, remained unanswered by the time this article went to print.