A 295-bed private hospital in the North West, which its owners say has been patient-ready for five years, potentially providing jobs to 50 people, including 25 doctors and 10 nurses, has been unable to operate because of the delay by the provincial government in renewing its licence, writes Chris Bateman for MedicalBrief.
Situated alongside poverty-stricken Stilfontein and Khuma townships some 15km from Klerksdorp, the Duff Scott Hospital, a former mine facility with scope for operating theatres, ICU wards and an ambulance on hand, would alleviate pressure on the two hugely over-subscribed public hospitals in Klerksdorp, according to its CEO and shareholder representative, Anissia Botha. Two other provincial hospitals closed in 2021 and 2022.
Botha claims to have spent over R80m upgrading, repairing and providing security to protect the former mine-hospital. “… Ironically, the Health Department granted us a temporary 100-bed licence earlier during Covid to function under contract as an infectious-diseases hospital,” she said.
However, the North West Health Department declined to renew the previous 295-bed licence from 2013, thus preventing the hospital from operating. The hospital has level one BEE status.
Citing the National Health Act, Health MEC Jonas Sello Lehari, said the licence application was declined because the Dr Kenneth Kaunda District, (in which Duff Scott Hospital falls), was "in excess of their allocated beds”.
However, in March 2015, he overturned a licence rejection by his Private Facilities Adjudication Committee (PFAC) – on condition that the hospital reopen within six months, something Botha said was impossible given the extensive repair and refurbishment required.
Asked what the current outstanding requirements, (if any), were for the hospital’s licence application to be finalised, Lehari said it was a ‘progress report on operating 100 beds,’ which his officials found compliant during their last inspection on 15 August last year. “Once the management indicates the facility readiness, the department will conduct a pre-occupation inspection so as to issue a licence,” he added.
Said Botha: “This is news to me – we have yet to receive any feedback from the PFAC meeting held in November 2024, where our application for a licence was apparently tabled, let alone a copy of any licence certificate to operate 100 beds.”
Lehari said job losses in the area began with the mine closure and that this closure, combined with the newly bought hospital being subsequently severely vandalized, had contributed to the hospital’s non-functionality.
Botha said she’s in a paradoxical bind: she needs the licence to build patient and operational capacity – but cannot afford to continue forking-out money for security and more upgrading in the ongoing hiatus. She wants to build up to the full 295-bed capacity and says a mere 100-bed licence, (which the province is willing to grant), won’t foot the bills.
The provincial Health Department had inspected the hospital, “and we’ve complied with most of their tick list like elbow taps – but putting in gas lines at R30m (for example), is a financial bridge too far when we have no income stream,” she said.
Veteran DA councillor for Stilfontein Portia Burrell said at Klerksdorp Hospital and the Tshepong Hospital (both state hospitals), "people have to wait for somebody to die or be discharged before they can be admitted. One ambulance serves our entire sub district. Residents tell me that if they call for an ambo at 8am, they get a call at 8pm to ask if they still want them to come”.
She’s planning public representative and township community visits to Duff Scott Hospital followed by a protest march to the legislature should no satisfactory answers be forthcoming.
Two other North West public hospitals stopped operating in 2022 and 20221 respectively: the Thusong District Hospital, (due to safety concerns), and the Christiana District Hospital, (destroyed by fire in 2021).