Minister acts on hospitals

2009-11-20 22:11

Durban - A group of senior government officials is to assess the state of South Africa's 354 public hospitals, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said on Friday.

"The team will look at each and every public health institution's problems, because we believe that our institutions are not doing well," he told hospital chief executives and managers at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

The government was worried health institutions were spending too much money and failing to deliver.

"South Africa is among 10 countries that have failed to bring down infant mortality rates. There are many countries that spend far less than we do but they have achieved this."

Not a money problem

The meeting was attended by CEOs and managers from the Western Cape, Eastern Cape, Free State and KwaZulu-Natal. The first meeting was held in Johannesburg on Thursday and attended by delegates from the five other provinces.

Motsoaledi said some problems facing health institutions would not be sorted out by pumping more money into them.

"You don't measure the quality of health by the amount you put [in], but by outcomes. We have a problem of spending too much money and receiving bad outcomes."

He expressed concern about hospitals which ran out of medicine and put the lives of patients in danger.
One example of this is health institutions in the Free State ran out antiretroviral drugs earlier this year.

"I am not happy with what happened in the Free State province. Hospitals should notify us a week before they run out of medicines."

Read the riot act

Motsoaledi asked representatives from the Free State to raise their hands before he read them the riot act.

"You can't just wake up and see that you have run out of medicine. It means that there is something wrong that you are doing. This is a serious thing."

One of the measures Motsoaledi said would help improve the state of the country's public hospitals was proper utilisation of clinics.

"This country has built 3 000 clinics since 1994 which are under-utilised. The use of clinics will help to avoid overcrowding in hospitals. Not every patient must end up in hospital."

Motsoaledi said qualifications for some hospital managers and chief executives were worrying, as they were not suitable for the work they were doing.

He said he was tired of hearing horror stories about state hospitals.

"We hear stories of patients who get lost, patients who get burnt, the shortage of medicines and dirty hospitals."
 

- SAPA