‘No hospital in KZN is under administration’

FIVE KwaZulu-Natal hospitals have not been placed under administration but are receiving support from the national Department of Health to help them address serious service delivery challenges.

Departmental spokesperson Foster Mohale, responding to a statement by DA spokesperson for health, Dr Imran Keeka, which alleged that the hospitals – RK Khan in Durban, Ngwelezane in Empangeni, Murchison in Port Shepstone, Northdale in Pietermaritzburg, and Ladysmith – were about to be placed under administration, said last night that this was not the case.

“The department is not aware of any decision to put any hospital in KwaZulu-Natal under administration.

“The department has dispatched provincial support teams of officials from head office to various provinces to provide support, especially at the health facilities that are experiencing serious challenges,” Mohale said.

“The teams are led by the deputy directors-general, and the provincial team is led by Dr Anban Pillay, with the support of other technical team members. The teams will work closely with provincial officials.

“These teams will also help ensure that any bottlenecks to service delivery are identified early, and appropriate remedial actions/interventions are swiftly taken to avoid unnecessary suffering and loss of life,” he said.

“It’s too early to say we can put hospitals under administration, and if a hospital needs to be under administration it will be under the administration of the province, not the national department.”

Mohale said the department would also help KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng with their radiation oncology backlogs in a programme that will be launched in early August this year.

He said the department would provide the provinces with R100 million between them to deal with the backlogs.

“While we have mentioned the long waiting times, as brought about by the high demand for health services, we also believe that with good management skills and planning, some of these waiting times can be markedly reduced,” Mohale said.

Keeka said yesterday that a deputy director-general had told delegates at a recent hospital oversight visit that there would be “an intervention” at five hospitals that had been identified as the worst-performing hospitals in the province to improve years of poor service to patients.

However, the official had declined to divulge the names, which Keeka said the party had later discovered via another senior departmental source.

“KwaZulu-Natal health is in absolute crisis, and it is impossible for any team to come into this province’s facilities to find that it is able to resolve any problems in the facility within a few days.

“If the department thinks that this is the case then the MEC (Sibongiseni Dhlomo) and his department are delusional,” Keeka said.

He said the use of the word intervention or administration was “semantic”, and that what mattered was whether a hospital’s core management functions were going to be taken over by an external team.

Problematic

“The hospitals earmarked for intervention are indeed some of the most problematic facilities in the province, with staff shortages, long queues, rudeness by staff, poor management of patients’ complaints and medicine shortages,” Keeka said.

“Other challenges include supply chain irregularities, overtime discrepancies and broken equipment.”

Keeka said the DA would submit urgent parliamentary questions to Dhlomo to establish the time frames for the intervention.

Provincial Health Department spokesperson Agiza Hlongwane said the DA’s naming of five hospitals was “false and deliberately misleading”.

He said 30 support teams had been established per province as part of a national initiative to identify and address challenges with healthcare service.

He said the provincial health department had identified the five hospitals to be a part of the exercise.

He said Dhlomo welcomed the support team, which national Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said last week would be visiting.

“We are looking forward to receiving support in strengthening capacity at some of our health institutions,” Dhlomo said.