SIX HOURS TO SEE A DOCTOR AT STEVE BIKO HOSPITAL

Patients can expect to wait for about six hours to see a doctor at the Steve Biko Academic Hospital in Pretoria.

This is according to official figures disclosed in a written reply by the Gauteng Health Department to my questions in the Gauteng Legislature.

According to the department, the assessed waiting time to see a doctor at the hospital was 330 minutes in August this year, and 294 minutes in September.

Patients have to wait more than two and a half hours to collect their files, and then another two and a half hours to get medicine at the pharmacy, a total of more than five hours.

Priority 1 emergency cases will be treated immediately, but Priority 2 cases will take more than an hour.

I am not surprised by these distressing figures as I have visited the hospital recently and seen for myself the misery of patients spending most of the day in slow queues.

The department claims that the new Queue Management System commissioned on 21 August is effective in reducing waiting periods, but this is not what most patients there have told me.

The department's own figures show that many patients who see a doctor will have to come back the next day to collect their medicine.

President Jacob Zuma has launched the second phase of Operation Phakisa aimed at creating the "Ideal Clinic" where no patient will wait more than two hours for services..

We need "ideal" hospitals too, where patients get reasonably speedy service. This needs a management shake-up, with competent people appointed to implement efficiency measures that work, not fail as at Steve Biko Hospital.

Statement issued by Jack Bloom MPL, DA Gauteng Shadow Health MEC, November 19 2014

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