Health facility watchdog calls for a bigger budget

The Office of Health Standards Compliance (OHSC), the watchdog agency charged with inspecting hospitals and clinics, will need a bigger budget if it is to take on new responsibilities under the National Health Insurance (NHI), parliament heard on Wednesday.

NHI is the government’s policy for implementing universal health coverage, which aims to ensure everyone has access to quality services that are free at the point of care. The first piece of enabling legislation for NHI was tabled in parliament on August 8, and proposed that a central fund buys services from public and private providers accredited by the OHSC.

Siphiwe Mndaweni, CEO of the OHSC, told MPs that the organisation was struggling to fulfil its mandate because of its small budget, which stands at R136.5m for the 2019-2020 fiscal year. The OHSC was established in 2014 and initially only inspected public hospitals and clinics, but since February its responsibilities had expanded to include inspecting private sector facilities, she said.

The OHSC’s budget is set to grow 5.5% over the next two years, to R144m in 2020-2021 and R151.9m in 2021-2022.

“It is not possible to undertake all these inspections and resolve complaints to fulfil our legislative mandate because of [our limited] budget,” she told parliament’s portfolio committee on health.

Once NHI was implemented, the OHSC would be charged with not only accrediting hospitals and clinics, but also private healthcare establishments such as general practitioners and dental practices.

Mndaweni’s complaint echoes the sentiment recently expressed by the head of the medical schemes industry regulator. Council for Medical Schemes (CMS) registrar Sipho Kabane told parliament in August that the organisation’s capacity to support NHI projects would be “severely compromised” if it did not get additional funding. The CMS budget for 2019-2020 is R164.9m.