The Gauteng health department has identified four hospitals with management problems and poor patient care.
”We are reluctant to name them. We don’t want to inform them through the press. We want to inform them in our own way,” department spokesperson Popo Maja said on Tuesday.
Problems plaguing these hospitals included inadequate management capacity, patient complaints, high staff turnover and negative media coverage.
The department would ”re-engineer the management” and address patient care at the problem hospitals, Maja said.
The findings follows a two-day ”strategic retreat” between Gauteng Health MEC Gwen Ramokgopa and her management team in Benoni to determine the progress they had made since April last year.
Ramokgopa also outlined her department’s plans for the 2005/6 financial year and proclaimed its successes. It won the gold and silver awards in the Premier’s service excellence awards in the face of government category, and a silver award in the service innovation category, Ramokgopa said in a statement.
Johannesburg hospital was voted best hospital and Mamelodi Hospital won the gold award from the National Productivity Institute.
A drive by the department to fill vacant posts had resulted in 450 applications.
Interviews with the applicants would be conducted and the appointments were due to be made by March.
A total of 317 graduate nurses were employed this month. A further 800 assistant nurses would be employed as interns at various healthcare facilities by the end of the present financial year.
The department was making ”pleasing progress” in implementing a comprehensive treatment and care programme to people living with HIV/Aids.
It had already exceeded its aim of providing treatment at 23 facilities to 10 000 people by March.
Ramokgopa said 68 393 people had received treatment and most of them were on various wellness programmes
The time taken to reach critically injured patients was still a matter of concern.
”I have noted with concern that the municipalities of the City of Johannesburg, Tshwane and Sedibeng are struggling to meet our provincial standard of reaching the majority of priority one patients within 15 minutes,” Ramokgopa said.
As part of a drive to replace an ageing ambulance fleet and improve service, 42 new vehicles had been purchased and a further 35 had been ordered. – Sapa