One of the first tasks undertaken by the new management of the Karin Grech, Gozo General and St Luke’s Hospitals was to dismiss administrative staff. This website is informed the entire accounts department is being shut down and staff made redundant.

I have asked Vitals Health (now owned by Steward) to confirm or deny this information but I got instead a few paragraphs of standard brochure fluff about their commitment to doctors and so on but not much in response to my questions. However through the fog of words, one can extract a reluctant confirmation.

I asked Steward Health Group “Can you please confirm that the accounts department at VGH has been made redundant? How many people have been impacted by this? Are any other redundancies planned? Why weren’t these employees covered by transfer of business rules?

Alessandra Pace replied on behalf of Steward Health Group: “Making progress will require that we also make some difficult decisions and today we decided to realign and streamline our corporate staff to shift resources to where they matter most: to upgrading and improving services within our hospitals.

I have asked again for the details required in my questions but got no more detailed response since yesterday.