Steward Health Care Malta has published a microsite [1] which it said, “contains significant amount of information relating to the hospitals concession’s finances and administration,” including to Gozo and the Barts Medical School.
Steward said it is giving “unprecedented public access” to the financial details relating to the hospital concession under its management in Malta.
“This is part of our commitment to transparency and our duty to the Maltese people, who we believe deserve clarity over the use of taxpayer funds,” the company said.
It includes “significant data” relating to the management of Gozo General, Karin Grech, and St Luke’s hospitals during the period under its management and records relating to the preceding Vitals Global Healthcare (VGH) era.
Steward said that it will “update and expand the information provided on this site over time and strongly encourage the Government of Malta to publish all expenses and financial data for government-run hospitals for context, including Mater Dei Hospital.”
When Steward International arrived in Malta on completion of the VGH acquisition in 2018, it said that it found “a concession in disarray. The administrative and financial structures were not fit for purpose, and there were no management accounts for the preceding three years.”
“Steward International discovered a large number of unexpected liabilities relating to VGH’s prior ownership. These liabilities totalled €61,786,010,” the company said
It added that “as part of our commitment to accountability and transparency we analysed and managed these liabilities in the years following our arrival. Some of these were settled and some were contested.”
Steward International said that it spent a total amount of €35,005,365 on the Barts Medical School and the microsite gives and illustration of the breakdown in costs which included payments to Sirimed SRL € 20,486,748.
It said that Barts Medical School has been operational since November 2019, “and the facilities have been praised by both QMUL and students. Both the Gozo General Hospital teaching staff and the hospital facilities are inspected and audited successfully by the UK General Medical Council on a yearly basis.”
To start, the Anatomy Centre was “immediately built by Steward Malta to allow existing first and second year students to continue their medical education,” it said,. “This was a crucial development; failure to action this would have resulted in the medical students transferring back to London and abandoning their Maltese education.”
From June 2018 to October 2018, Steward Malta said that it “actioned an accelerated refurbishment of the Anatomy Centre to ensure the success of the QMUL programme and to repair the Relationship.”
Steward Malta stated that it “rapidly designed and built the Barts Medical School in 17 months, from April 2018 to November 2019. This is the first medical school on Gozo, constructed in partnership with Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry – a faculty of QMUL, one of the three largest colleges of the University of London and a member of the prestigious Russell Group.”
Please click here to access the website [2]
File photo: Gozo News/Anthony Zammit