The government’s watchdog agency for inspecting hospitals and clinics has told Parliament it needs more resources if it is to expand its oversight into the private sector and speed up the resolution of complaints, reports Business Day.
South Africa has more than 3,800 public hospitals and clinics, but only 387 were inspected by the Office of Health Standards Compliance (OSHC) in 2020/2021, partly because none could be scrutinised in the first half of the year due to lockdown regulations and partly due to its own capacity constraints.
OHSC CEO Siphiwe Mndaweni told MPs on Wednesday (17 November) that, like many government agencies, the organisation’s capacity to fulfil its mandate during the 2020/2021 fiscal year was delayed by the pandemic. But it faced deeper challenges due to its constrained and inadequate budget, she said. The OHSC’s budget allocation stood at R137.6m for the 2020/2021 fiscal year, a cut in real terms on its R136.5m budget the year before.
The OHSC’s five-year strategic plan set a target of inspecting every health facility at least once every four years. “We have more than 5,000 establishments to inspect. With current staff and a centralised delivery model that is going to be extremely challenging. Regional offices would make it easier and faster to do provincial work, but it will require additional funding,” she said.
Last year, lockdown restrictions limited access to health facilities and at times prohibited travel between provinces. She said just 299 public health facilities were due to be inspected in 2021/2022. The start of private-sector inspections had been delayed by the pandemic and would only begin in the second half of the 2021/2022 fiscal year, she added.
COVID-19 and the OHSC’s resource constraints had hampered its ability to handle complaints. For example, only five of the 203 complaints received from patients or health establishment in 2020/2021 were resolved within the organisation’s target of 30 working days, and only one of the nine complaints that had warranted a full-blown investigation had been resolved within its six-month target.
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