Five-Hour Queues At Mosta Health Centre As Morale Spirals Down For Workers And Patients

Morale is on a downward spiral for both health workers and patients at the Mosta health centre, as queues of up to five hours are now being experienced.
The health centre is dealing with a couple of issues at hand, which are all festering into much bigger problems, as Malta continues to deal with the apparent healthcare staff crisis.
“Apart from the five-hour waits, one out of the four GP rooms is out of service – there is a malfunction in the air-conditioner which has been there for over three months and still not fixed,” a health worker from the Mosta health centre told Lovin Malta.
“The room is still not being used since the air-conditioner is still not there,” they explained, which is, in turn, contributing to even longer waits.
“Ultimately the morale and energy of both healthcare professionals and patients are spiralling down.”
Attaching a photo of the counter used to call patients, the health worker explained how 128 is the number of patients seen, with 329 being the number of minutes the next patient in line has been waiting for – amounting to five hours and a half!

"329 is the number of minutes that the next patient has been waiting"
“In the afternoon and evening, we try to use another room,” they said, explaining how they usually have four consultation rooms, so now no extra rooms are available.
“We’ve had to wait months to install one lousy air conditioner – I’m sure if we, as workers, collected the money and got it done ourselves, it would have taken less time,” they said.
The health worker also criticised the fact that there is no appointment system present, so as it is, one has to wait for endless hours to be seen by a doctor.
“The X-Ray issue is still there as well, so you can imagine the queues of people at the health centre!” they confirmed.
This is all happening while X-Ray machines are available at the Paola, Gżira and Floriana health care centres as well, with no plans of extending service times present.
As previously reported by Lovin Malta, Mosta’s health centre is still the only centre which offers X-Rays on a 24-hour basis, with all cases going to Mosta after 7pm, or on Sundays and public holidays.
What do you make of this reality?