Hospital CEOs need to become more accessible to the public, and if not, risk being charged with insubordination, KZN Health MEC Nomagugu Simelane has warned, adding that they should take a leaf from the book of privately-run hospitals.
Appointing a group of new CEOs last week, she urged them to treat patients “with care and dignity, and to find creative problem-solving skills to address challenges they may come across”.
Her warning was extended to CEOs and other managers who refused to publicly display their contact details or switched off their phones or gave incorrect contact numbers and information, reports News24.
She said publication of these details was now departmental policy, and those who transgressed the rules could be “charged for insubordination”.
While she did not mind receiving calls with complaints about health facilities at all hours, she added that CEOs had to be more accessible and responsible.
“I get called at 1am and 2am in the morning, which is fine. But why must I be the only one who doesn’t sleep when it’s your responsibility to manage your facility? I can’t become a co-manager to your facility. So, we want those numbers to be put there at every facility – and not just at one point but at all the points our patients access.”
She added: “You are called a CEO and manager for a reason. You are expected to manage every single person in the facility. And someone who can’t be managed by you must then go and be managed elsewhere. If they can’t take instructions from you as the CEO, they must leave. Make sure you stamp your authority. It’s not about being rude or arrogant, but knowing your responsibility and authority and power as manager, and making sure everyone accounts to the authority.”
She said a common complaint was staff who “take tea breaks en masse, leaving patients stranded”.
“As managers …you have patients who wait … just because those who are operating those units have decided to go on lunch, or on a tea break at the same time. How does it happen? Four people closing a pharmacy so they can go and have tea? Where is management? Management is about managing your human resources.”
She said CEOs needed to take a leaf out of the page of privately run hospitals.
“Their attitude is the patient comes first, and they have minimum waiting times. That is what we expect when we go to private hospitals, but that is not what we give to our people.
“The poorest of the poor … come to us because they have no other option. So, if we don’t treat them in a manner that they should be treated, it means we don’t deserve whatever we get from the government or the positions we occupy.”
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