108 Mater Dei patients required nursing home care – Health Minister

As of the beginning of February, 108 patients at Mater Dei hospital required treatment in nursing homes or other rehabilitation centres, Health Minister Konrad Mizzi revealed.

Responding to a parliamentary question by shadow health minister Claudette Buttigieg, Mizzi said that 46 of these patients are in long-term care while 62 of them are undergoing rehab treatment at Mater Dei.

Mizzi added that, while the number of rehab patients at Mater Dei has increased by 49 people since November, the number of long-term-care patients has decreased by 65 people.

In response to a separate PQ by Buttigieg, Mizzi said that patients spent an average of 4.3 hours in hospital beds as of November 2014. This is a registered decrease from the average of 5.0 hours that was registered in November 2013. 

In a separate PQ, Buttigieg asked Mizzi whether the ongoing crisis at Mater Dei was partially due to there being a number of patients, particularly children and elderly people, on whom the influenza vaccine hadn’t worked.

“The reason behind many of the problems at Mater Dei is the bed shortage, due to poor planning by the previous administration,” Mizzi responded. “Throughout this year, there was an influx of patients that arrived at Mater Dei with respiratory illnesses.”