Minister of Health, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi.
Only two of the nine provinces are using a system the government spent close to R2 million rand on to help provincial health departments with the case management of medico-legal claims.
This was according to a parliamentary reply from the Minister of Health, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi following questions by DA MP, Michele Clarke.
Clarke wanted to know the cost of the case management system and how widely it had been implemented.
The minister said they paid R 1 826 455.25 million for the development and maintenance of the case management system.
He noted that the system picks up the possible duplication of fraudulent medico-legal cases, the number of cases per hospital, and notifications on cases coming to trial each month, among other things.
However, he said of the nine provinces in the country, only eight participated in the transversal tender to appoint the service provider, with the exception of the Western Cape, and only two provinces used the system.
“To date, the system has been rolled out in five provinces i.e., KZN, Free State, Northern Cape, North West and Gauteng.
“However, the system is not actively used in those provinces where it has been rolled out save for KZN and Free State.”
In response to further questions, the minister noted that the total number of active medico legal cases as of late September was 9 721 distributed across provinces as follows: Eastern Cape (3 014), KwaZulu-Natal (1 817), Limpopo (1 553), Gauteng (1 300), Mpumalanga (958), Western Cape (411), Free State (317), North West (262) and Northern Cape (89).
The total contingent liability of the active cases was over R108 billion, the minister noted.
According to the minister three service providers appointed to assist the department in dealing with medico-legal claims also allegedly filed 58 fraudulent claims.
“The matters have not yet been finalised by the courts. Since the signing of the National Proclamation by the President, the forensic reports from the Service Providers appointed by the Department have been provided to the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) to form the basis of their investigations.
The SIU has already visited NDoH and some of the Provinces,” Motsoaledi said.
Clarke said: “Given the avalanche of medico-legal claims against the provinces, it is very concerning that the Department’s case management is not being utilised by the province and that they have contracted service providers that appear to be part of the feeding frenzy. Fraudulent claims and unscrupulous legal practitioners are not only harming the public health sector and hampering the provision of health care, they are also causing great harm to victims who need the funds for further medical care.”
Eastern Cape Premier Oscar Mabuyane on Sunday told the SABC they were working on addressing the issue of medico legal claims.
“Our department is submerged in this problem of medico legal that we are trying to extricate it out of, which has eroded our baseline to provide services.
“Against the challenges we have, we are (seeing) improvements,” Mabuyane said.
Cape Times