The department of health says it remains committed to a case management system intended to help provincial health departments defend themselves against medical negligence claims, but cannot force them to use it.
Earlier this week the auditor-general’s office said only one province is using the system, and its idling in several others verges on fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
The Treasury has expressed growing concern over the budget implications of ballooning medical negligence payouts to successful claimants, as they are crowding out spending on personnel and vital health-care services.
Provinces faced contingent liabilities of R120.3bn in the 2021/2022 financial year and paid out R855.6m to successful claimants, according to figures released in parliament earlier this week by the auditor-general.
The R1.2m case management project is one of several government initiatives to try and curb crippling payouts for medical negligence claims, and was expected to yield relatively quick results.
The department’s 2021/2022 performance plan says the scheme should have been implemented in at least seven provinces by the end of March. But only four provincial health departments had imported data into the case management system by that date and Free State was the only province using it, Clothilde Oliphant, a health specialist with the auditor-general’s office, told parliament’s portfolio committee on health on Tuesday.
Department of health spokesperson Foster Mohale said it cannot compel provinces to use it. “Engagement with the provinces will be done to establish why they are not using the case management system,” he said.
The Northern Cape has used the system but stopped when the head of its medico-legal unit left the provincial health department to take up a post with the Free State, he said.
“It would seem that since he left Northern Cape to Free State, the new guard has not been using the system. This is [due to] the internal and handover issues in the province,” he said.
Mohale said KwaZulu-Natal is now using the system and Gauteng is poised to follow suit. The Eastern Cape already has its own system in place and needs to ensure interoperability between its platform and the new case management system, he said.
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