The average patient at Mater Dei Hospital’s accident and emergency department waited around three hours to be seen by a doctor in February, the Health Minister acknowledged on Tuesday. Chris Fearne told parliament that there was an average three-hour waiting time between a patient being registered at the hospital’s A&E department and a doctor attending to them. The statistic is based on the experience of the 5,432 patients who reported to Mater Dei’s A&E between February 1 and 21. Not all patients faced long waits: people who report to the emergency department first undergo triage – a process by which medical staff determine how urgent their medical condition is – with those requiring urgent care seen first. It took medical staff an average of 19 minutes to carry out triage on patients after they were registered at the A&E department. Fearne divulged the figures in response to a question from Opposition MP Ian Vassallo. Complaints about long waiting times at the state hospital’s A&E department are a regular occurrence and date back years. Back in 2014, the average patient at Mater Dei's emergency department waited seven hours to be seen. Britain’s National Health Service...
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