Summary extract from speech by Jack Bloom MPL in debate on the 2011/12 Gauteng Health Annual Report, November 28 2012
10 000 PATIENTS ON WAITING LISTS OF MAJOR GAUTENG HOSPITALS
More than 10 000 patients are on waiting lists for surgery at the four academic hospitals in Gauteng (Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg, Steve Biko, Chris Hani Baragwanath, George Mukhari).
A child with a cleft palate will wait ten years to have it repaired at the Steve Biko Academic Hospital. If you need a joint replacement, or a cataract removed, you will wait about two years. But when the day for the operation finally arrives, it may well be cancelled because of any number of things - no sterile linen, no anaesthetists, a missing anaesthetic or the air-conditioner to chill the theatre isn't working.
A lot of the problem is because suppliers haven't been paid. So equipment isn't maintained, and it breaks. There is little of comfort in this annual health report. The Department missed 117 of its 210 targets. This is a 56% failure rate.
I really do feel sorry for Health MEC Health Papo. He is genuinely trying to clean up an almighty mess.
It is so bad that the Department still cannot give an accurate figure on how many people it employs.
He is the third MEC in three years. There have been three heads of department in three years. Sixty two senior staff are in acting positions. A new Head of Department has yet to be appointed, and progress is slow in appointing new hospital CEOs.
Spending according to budget is a foreign concept in this department. There are wild overspends in some programmes, and gross under-spending in others.
Provincial and central hospitals overspent by more than a billion rand. But strangely, although hospital equipment breaks down all the time, R257 million (61%) of the R419 million machinery and equipment budget went unspent.
Despite broken lifts and crumbling facilities, R132 million was not spent of the R722 million set aside for building and other fixed structure. Emergency services failed to spend R91 million, even though response times are shockingly slow.
Ambulances responded to only 33% of Priority One emergency calls within 15 minutes instead of the 65% target. This figure is terrible but I think it's worse than this because Johannesburg council refuses to give figures at all.
The Auckland Park Medical Depot is a disaster. According to the Annual Report, only 64% of essential drugs were delivered on time instead of the 98% target..
The Honourable MEC has said that this has now risen to 78 percent. But this means that 22% of medicines do not get to hospitals and clinics on time.
The general crisis in our hospitals has given rise to an avalanche of medico-legal claims. The potential liability has risen from R876 million in 2010/11 to R1.436 billion in 2011/12.
Court awards this year for medical mistakes amount in total to more than R60 million.
It's time to crack the whip, Mr MEC. All this mismanagement and probable corruption must stop.
The DA solution when we are in charge includes the following:
1. Giving hospitals the autonomy to manage, including maintenance and procurement
2. Improving management by firing incompetents and appointing the best people for the job
3. Forming creative partnerships with the private sector
4. Ensuring transparent and fair procurement so that we get fair value from contractors who can do the job
5. Instituting real revenue earners, not the loss-making Folateng private wards
6. Computerising, so that paper files are done away with and real costs can be monitored and controlled
I really wish Honourable MEC Papo well in his turn-around efforts. I hope he succeeds because there will then be less for us to do when we take over.
Statement issued by Jack Bloom MPL, DA Gauteng Health Spokesman, November 28 2012
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