Eastern Cape Health is facing more than R20bn in medico-legal claims. City Press reports that this was according to Sizwe Kupelo, provincial health spokesperson, who said the department had lost funds that were meant for service delivery through fraudulent claims of negligence that were submitted by legal practitioners. Kupelo alleged that, in some cases, the lawyers made these bogus claims without their clients’ knowledge in order to enrich themselves – and defraud the state.
To date, the total value of medico-legal claims that the department was grappling with amounted to more than R20bn, he is quoted in the report as saying. While the department had settled some claims, added Kupelo, without specifying the amount, these payments were not part of the R20bn figure currently before the department.
The department was probing each of those claims to distinguish the genuine ones from the fraudulent ones, he said.
[link url="https://city-press.news24.com/News/dodgy-lawyers-rack-up-r20bn-medico-legal-claims-20191119"]City Press report[/link]