Health matters

The Christmas holidays always end this way: after days of shopping and feasting, everyone drops down sick. But then, a blessing: the shut-downs are over, schools reopen and a semblance of order takes over.

It is always the same, but this year the ‘Aussie flu’ – as they seem to have called it – has been particularly virulent. Almost everyone you know has been sick and the hospitals, not just here but everywhere, have been full up and inundated.

The staff did wonders, but there is a limit to what they can do, given people’s sheer stupidity. People already sick persist in going to work or, worse, out to parties or to the homes of other people, thus increasing the sick wave exponentially.

We should have learnt the lessons from the plague, when sick people were rigorously quarantined until the sickness had passed, but we have not, and if you so much as suggest some small precautions you get called ‘past-it’ – or worse epithets.

Meanwhile, those lucky enough not to have had to frequent Mater Dei during the year, get to savour its delicacies at this time. The food fare at the hospital has deteriorated – certainly from what it was just before the election. And those who use public transport have to huddle in the inadequate bus shelter from the wind and the rain because the planners of the biggest construction project in Europe in its day forgot to include an underground bus station in their plans. Now it seems that this is being addressed.

On a wider level, the brainwave that consisted in a PPP between the government and a mysterious company that did not have ‘healthcare’ in its CV predictably petered out. Vitals Global Healthcare, which had not managed an ambulance in its day, sold its holding in the Gozo, St Luke’s and Karen Grech Hospitals in Malta for just one Euro to an American company, Steward Health Care.

Its website says: “Steward Health Care, the largest private hospital operator in the United States, is a physician-led health care services organisation committed to providing the highest quality of care in the communities where patients live. Steward’s unique health care service delivery model leverages technology, innovation and care coordination to keep patients healthier.

“Steward operates 36 community hospitals in 10 states that employ approximately 37,000 people and regularly receives top awards for quality and safety. The Steward network includes more than 26 urgent care centres, 42 preferred skilled nursing facilities, substantial behavioural health services, over 7,300 beds under management, and more than 1.1 million covered lives through the company’s managed care and health insurance services.

“Steward enjoys positive relationships in the communities where it operates and has provided $221 million in community benefits and paid more than $120 million in taxes in the past four years.

“Founded in 2010 with investment from Cerberus Capital Management, Steward has methodically built a substantial portfolio of inpatient and outpatient services. After unprecedented success in New England, Steward has recently expanded nationally to Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Texas, Utah, Arizona, Arkansas, Louisiana and Colorado.”

One notes from this that Steward has never operated outside the US and that henceforth its Malta operation will be a first. Maltese healthcare has historically operated on a free healthcare model which is very different from the US model.

The government has promised a full debate in a parliament plenary and the Opposition has enthusiastically agreed to this, but perhaps this plenary debate should be preceded by multiple sittings of the appropriate Parliamentary Committee at which Steward officials can be questioned and grilled.

While the VGH debacle is a key defeat for the government (and there are many questions here that must be asked), another defeat seems coming at Cospicua where the American University of Malta seems to be on its last legs – with less than 20 students, teachers that had been recruited and who have relocated here being sacked through an email and rumblings on what will now happen to the Zonqor land earmarked for it.

For all the hundreds of words being spent on the AUM debacle, I still think the VGH – Steward issue is one of major interest to all Maltese because healthcare is of vital importance to the country – as we can see in these flu-dominated days.