The move announced by Finance Minister Tito Mboweni in his Budget speech that Treasury would be shifting unspent National Health Insurance (NHI) funds to address staff shortages and improve service delivery in the public healthcare sector ties in with government’s response to rising medical negligence claims as outlined in the budget review this year, reports Moneyweb. Claims against health departments rocketed from R28.6bn in March 2015 to R80.4bn in March 2018. Payments for claims in this three-year period escalated from R498.7m to R2.8bn.
The report says the increase in medico-legal claims is attributed to inadequate quality of care, poor patient record management and poor legal capacity. To address this, government plans to recruit more medical specialist personnel, inspect public healthcare facilities more regularly, and recruit national teams of legal experts. The budget review also refers to the possibility of legislative amendments to allow for periodic settlement payments to claimants rather than lump-sum payments. This would assist in terms of budgeting for these claims.
The report says a further R2.4bn from the NHI indirect grant will, over the next three years, go towards improving public health information systems as well as centralising the dispensing and distribution of chronic medicines. Government intends to have 50m patients registered on the NHI patient beneficiary registry, and to have 3,850 health facilities reporting availability of chronic medicines to a national distribution centre. This centre will service 3.8m chronic medicine patients by March 2022.
Also, the report says, the health promotion levy, implemented for the first time last year, will go up from 2.1c per gram after the first four grams of sugar to 2.21c per gram with effect from April 1 this year. This means that on a 330ml can of juice with 37.9g of sugar, you will pay 74.91c in sugar tax compared to 71.19c last year
The report noted that the only reference to the issue of funding for NHI was the flatlining of medical tax credits – a move that is expected to generate additional revenue of R1bn in 2019/20. Spending in the NHI programme is set to increase at an average annual rate of 36.6%, from R1.2bn in 2018/19 to R3bn in 2021/22.
[link url="https://www.moneyweb.co.za/in-depth/budget/funds-for-nhi-to-be-redirected-to-improving-health-services/"]Moneyweb report[/link]