Medical Association, government clash heads on hospital waiting lists

“Lengthy” hospital waiting lists led many patients to give up on more than 60,000 doctor’s appointments at Mater Dei last year, the head of the Medical Association has claimed.But the government has categorically denied Martin Balzan’s claims, saying they are “completely wrong” and not backed up by statistics.Dr Balzan, who serves as general secretary of the Medical Association of Malta, said many patients were waiting more than a year before being examined by a specialist at the State hospital – a wait many felt was simply too long.Reduced waiting lists were illusory, he said. “Patients are now waiting to be diagnosed, so the number waiting to be operated on has been reduced,” the veteran respiratory physician claimed, saying that the bottleneck had merely been shifted from surgery to the outpatient departments.A Healthy Ministry spokesperson said the numbers gave the lie to Dr Balzan’s “mistaken” claims. While admitting that “more work needs to be done” to reduce outpatient waiting lists, they said that the number of new operations booked following diagnosis had risen substantially over the past years.Last year, 20,000 new operations had been booked through outpatients, they...