Medical pressure group expresses concern that money will jeopardise patient interest in privatisation deal

Joanna Demarco Patients Not Profit (PNP), a new medical pressure group, yesterday expressed their concern that with the privatization of hospitals, money will take precedence over patients’ interests.

The group, made up of a variety of healthcare professionals, students and concerned citizens, voiced their opinion at a public demonstration in Pjazza de la Valette, Valletta yesterday. “Private involvement is the first step to privatization,” said David Cassar, a medical student and member of the pressure group, elaborating that the concern is that when money comes into the equation, “money will come before patient interest.”

“The primary aim of a health system is to serve patients. Mixing business with public healthcare introduces an obvious conflict of interest, and there is evidence of this abroad,” the group said.

According to PNP, the model of Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) in healthcare “has been tried abroad [...] and failed”. The group explained that studies into such PPPs show that healthcare professionals’ performance is not judged on efficacy but on their capacity to minimize expense and maximize profit.

The non-partisan movement was created due to the recent controversial agreement regarding the ‘rental of three public hospitals to private company Vitals Global Healthcare (VGH), for 30 years’. VGH now effectively owns and manages the St Luke’s, Karin Grech and Gozo General hospitals. According to PNP, their movement was ‘borne out of disappointment’, and are advocating for transparency for healthcare deals, evidence-based public health policy and patient-centred health systems rather than profit-driven.

The pressure group has asked for the complete publication of contracts pertaining to the pub- lic healthcare systems. “The contracts have been released but been heavily redacted,” Alexander Clayman, spokesperson of PNP and student rep of the Faculty of Medicine told The Malta Independent on Sunday. “We believe that in a functioning democracy, the public should be able to read the contract that pertain to the health system, so we encourage the government to publish these documents in full”.

Professor Kevin Cassar, vascular surgeon and associate professor of surgery at the University of Malta, who was present at the demonstration, expressed his concern. He asked, “How does the government, who has the responsibility to invest in the best health service, hand out the service to a company with no track record in health and what process was involved in selecting this company in particular?”

“Health was a high priority in the electoral manifesto, so this privatization of a significant chunk of the health system came as a big surprise since it was in neither political party’s manifesto,” he said.