If you've ever tried to book an MRI or a first specialist appointment, you know the feeling. Your GP sends the referral, a letter arrives, and then… silence. You're 'on the list'. Weeks become months. Maybe you start thinking about going private, if you can afford it. If not, you wait.

Waiting lists aren't just statistics; they decide how long your nanna's vision remains blurry, or whether your dad's knee gets fixed before he loses work, and how early cancers or heart problems are picked up. They've also been a political headache for years.

So: have waiting lists actually gone down?

How bad was it?

Over a decade ago, the warning lights were already flashing.

A National Audit Office (NAO) audit on elective surgery at Mater Dei found that by March 2012 there were about 14,700 patients waiting for an operation in just four major specialties (orthopaedics, general surgery, ENT and ophthalmic).

Another NAO exercise on outpatients later reported that in 2015 roughly three quarters of outpatient appointments were not being carried out within the government's own three-month target. In some clinics, waiting times stretched to many months.

That was already bad. But the size of the job has grown massively since then. Malta's resident population at the end of 2013 was around 428,000. By the end of last year, it had risen to roughly 574,000. Tourism has piled on extra pressure: from about 1.6 million inbound visitors in 2013 (12.9 million nights) to 3.56 million in 2024 (22.9 million nights). On a typical day, that's roughly 35,000 tourist-nights in 2013 vs about 63,000 today.

Put together:

• 2013: 'effective population' ≈ 428k residents + 35k tourists ≈ 463k
• 2024: 'effective population' ≈ 574k residents + 63k tourists ≈ 636k

So our health system is now serving roughly 40% more people at any given time than it was in 2013, before you even count ageing and chronic illness. Any discussion of waiting lists that ignores that is missing half the story.

What did the government do?

Extra sessions and overtime. One of the bluntest tools has been simply doing more work in the same buildings: extra evening clinics, weekend operating, targeted blitzes to clear backlogs. Not glamorous, but it does move numbers.

Outsourcing. In 2024 a tender sought to outsource around 3,500 operations at about €2,700 each. Parliamentary replies the same year reported over 8,000 operations pending across 11 specialties. Budget 2026 explicitly sets aside €16 million for outsourced medical services, calling the practice 'instrumental' in reducing waits.

New hubs. The flagship is the Censu Moran Regional Health Centre in Paola — a long-delayed health hub for the south, which began receiving outpatients in mid-2025. In Gozo, Budget 2026 frames an expanded outpatient department, new operating theatres and other works at Gozo General as a future 'Gozo Health Campus'. A Northern Regional Health Hub in Buġibba-Qawra has been planned for years but in late 2024 the Health Minister said it was 'mathematically impossible' to staff in the near term — a reminder that bricks are the easy part.

Primary care upgrades. Health centres in Gżira, Birkirkara, Qormi, Victoria and Rabat have been refurbished, and smaller community clinics (bereġ) have opened in Gudja, Fgura, Pietà and Birżebbuġa to handle simple care close to home.

Have waiting lists actually gone down?

Malta still doesn't publish a clean, long-term time series of waiting times by specialty, so we can't give a 'from 180 days to 90 days' answer. But the available numbers tell a coherent story:

• Surgical backlog: ~14,700 in 2012 (4 specialties) → 8,454 in 2024 (11 specialties)
• Outpatient: still significant pressure, but new capacity at Censu Moran and the refurbished centres should be biting
• Diagnostics: MRI in particular remains a recurrent media and parliamentary-question topic

On a per-person basis, surgical waits have improved relative to where they would otherwise be — given the demand growth. Outpatient and diagnostic waits have improved in some areas but remain stubborn in others.

Budget 2026 and the two big bottlenecks

Budget 2026 keeps health spending at historically high levels, allocates the €16M for outsourcing, funds new MRI/CT/dental equipment for Mater Dei and Censu Moran, and advances the Gozo Health Campus. Qormi and Gżira are due to start operating 24/7 and Gozo until midnight.

But two bottlenecks remain. Labour — Malta is a small island competing with much bigger health systems for English-speaking nurses and doctors, and the Northern Hub is paused because the staff don't exist yet. IT — fragmented, paper-heavy systems mean we're still arguing in the dark about exactly how big each waiting list is.

So is the claim accurate?

Borg's anecdote is real. The systemic claim it points to — that waiting times have not improved — is contradicted by the evidence. The system has absorbed a 40% growth in effective demand and held the line on surgical queues, opened new capacity in Paola and Gozo, and committed €16M in this year's budget specifically to drive waits down further.

Pain points remain. MRI queues are real. Some outpatient clinics are still slow. But 'no improvement' isn't an honest reading of the data.

Verdict: Misleading. The kernel of truth — that waits exist — is wrapped in a framing the trend lines don't support.