Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said on Friday that a group of senior government officials would be created to assess the state of South Africa's 354 public hospitals.
"The team will look at each and every public health institution's problems, because we believe that our institutions are not doing well," he told hospital chief executives and managers at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
He said the government was worried that health institutions were spending too much money and failing to deliver.
"South Africa is among 10 countries that have failed to bring down infant mortality rates. There are many countries that spend far less than we do but they have achieved this."
Continues Below ↓
The meeting was attended by CEOs and managers from the Western Cape, the Eastern Cape, the Free State and KwaZulu-Natal. A meeting held in Johannesburg on Thursday was attended by delegates from the five other provinces.
Motsoaledi said some problems facing health institutions would not be sorted out by pumping more money into them.
"You don't measure the quality of health by the amount you put (in), but by outcomes. We have a problem of spending too much money and receiving bad outcomes."
Hospitals should produce better outcomes with the budget they received.
"That is why I have called you. I want better outcomes very quickly."
'It means that there is something wrong that you are doing. This is a serious thing' He expressed concern about hospitals that ran out of medicine and put the lives of patients in danger. Health institutions in the Free State had ran out of antiretroviral drugs earlier this year, he said.
"I am not happy with what happened in the Free State province. Hospitals should notify us a week before they run out medicines."
Motsoaledi asked representatives from the Free State to raise their hands before he read them the riot act.
"You can't just wake up and see that you have run out of medicine.
Continues...
|
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Digg
Delicious
Newsvine
Facebook
muti
Twitter
