Negligent facilities to face the music

Health MEC Butana Komphela says any government health facility found to be guilty of negligence in the Free State will face consequences.

Komphela was speaking in an interview with The New Age on Saturday at Bloem Spa where he held a conference with officials from various hospitals.

The workshop was part of the MEC's attempt to address litigation against the department concerning cases of medical negligence, cerebral palsy claims emanating from medical negligence during childbirth, deaths of newborns in hospitals as well as injury and death of mothers while giving birth. The workshop was led by retired judge Neels Claasen who was appointed by Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi.

"If negligence is proven, those responsible must face the consequences. I am not saying that when you drive the car and it gets a puncture and crashes, you are negligent. Anyone can get that kind of problem, but when you are warned that there are potholes and you still drive fast then you are negligent and you have to be penalised," Komphela said.

Between 2004 and 2015, the Free State health department was sued for R703m by patients who claimed medical negligence in various government health facilities across the province.

It was reported that the majority of these lawsuits were filed against Universitas Academic Hospital and the Pelonomi Regional Hospital. An influx of patients, overcrowding, under-staffing and the negative attitude of some personnel were some of the issues said to be contributing to medical negligence.

"These workshops should open our staff's eyes and we should be able to avoid litigation. Our staff should be able to communicate with patients whenever there are problems," Komphela said.

"It was a workshop on how to mitigate during litigation that we are getting as a province because the minister and the national council are worried that if we can't train our people on how to handle these matters we are going to find ourselves with problems.

"We are not saying there will be no mistakes in surgery and if it was something that was to happen, we must say it happened and if it's a human error we must say it's a human error and we will engage on the way forward."

Komphela said there were a number of cases in which his department was facing legal action and with some of them there weren't even proper records. "We lose most of the cases in court because you may find that the patient has five lawyers and the department has only one with no proper records, so we need our staff to always have records," he said.

BECKER SEMELA

New Age - 04 May 2017