€1.3 billion concession: taxpayers to face 30-year bill for privately run 300-bed hospital

The Health Ministry is expected to pay around €1.3 billion over the next 30 years to private administrators of a proposed new 300-bed mini-hospital at St Vincent de Paul.

Fresh details emerging from government tender documents are raising serious questions within the health sector about the true nature of the newly announced project, suggesting it may more closely resemble a long-term public-private concession (as happened with Vitals Global Healthcare / Steward Healthcare) than a state-built public hospital.

When Prime Minister Robert Abela unveiled the project last week, the announcement gave the impression that the government would build a new intermediate-care hospital, to be named Sir Temi Zammit Hospital, to help ease pressure on Mater Dei Hospital.

But tender documents seen by The Shift indicate a very different structure.

Rather than government financing and operating the facility, bidders are being invited to finance and build the hospital themselves, with the winning consortium then awarded a 27-year contract to administer and operate the facility on behalf of the government.

The estimated public cost is around €44 million annually over 30 years, or a staggering €1.3 billion.

Significantly, that figure appears to cover only concession payments to the private operator.

Medical care, admissions, medicines and clinical staffing, including doctors and other healthcare professionals, would remain a separate government expense, potentially pushing the real lifetime public cost well beyond the €1.3 billion headline figure.

These revelations have prompted comparisons with the scandalous hospitals concession granted to Vitals Global Healthcare and later transferred to Steward Health Care, a deal later found by the courts to be fraudulent.

Government sources told The Shift that the model raises immediate red flags, including a decades-long concession, recurring annual payments, private administration of public health infrastructure, and potentially substantial public liabilities not captured by the headline project cost.

Questions are also being raised over value for money.

At €44 million annually for a 300-bed intermediate-care hospital, the estimate has been described as “excessive”, particularly given that the operator would not assume responsibility for clinical care.

The project was presented as an expansion of a much smaller intermediate-care pilot launched at St Vincent de Paul in 2024, beginning with 16 beds and later expanding to 40.

The Health Ministry has argued that the pilot demonstrated the need for a much larger dedicated facility to ease bed pressure at Mater Dei Hospital and improve rehabilitation and transitional care for older patients.