Department drowning in negligence claims
THE extremely high number of medical negligence cases is crippling the Department of Health (DOH) as money that could be used for resources and filling vacancies were being redirected to legal battles.
This has been revealed by Auditor General (AG) Tsakani Maluleke.
Speaking at a media briefing yesterday, Maluleke said the financial status of a number of departments continued to be “alarming”, especially the provincial departments of health and education.
The AG 2019/2020 general report is on the audit outcomes for the national and provincial departments.
According to Maluleke, medical negligence claims were often under-budgeted for.
The Western Cape continued to produce the best results with 70% clean audits.
Every auditee in the province, except for one, submitted their annual financial statements on time for auditing.
In Gauteng, the DOH budgeted R2.6 million for medical negligence cases but ended up paying R501m in the year.
“This then takes away from other aspects in the budget and that’s what we’re seeing across the country. Record management is a problem and fraudulent claims also hit them hard,” Maluleke said.
There were 111 auditees (26%) that managed to produce quality financial statements and performance reports to comply with key legislation, thereby receiving a clean audit. This was a slight improvement from the 98 (23%) in the previous year.
Countrywide, 74% of auditees received unqualified audit opinions on their financial statements, a slight improvement from 71% the previous year.
Maluleke said she believed there could have been more clean audits.
“We know that it is harder to keep a clean audit than to get it. One of the key pillars to keep a clean audit is about stable management that drives decisive internal controls measures and monitors and applies consequences on an ongoing basis,” she said.
In Gauteng, there was no movement from the previous financial year as the four auditees that improved were offset by the four that regressed.