Fight against medical litigation claims by syndicates being won

GAUTENG Health and Wellness MEC Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko says her department has recorded a 7% decline in medico-legal litigations claims.

Last year, the MEC revealed her department faced R30 billion in legal claims dating back to 2003. These had come down to just over R24bn due to stringent measures undertaken by her administration to take control.

She said there was a syndicate of lawyers and doctors who manipulate systems to benefit from litigation against her department, and that these were being dealt with.

“Medico-legal claims are still a major concern. However, we have managed to bring down the rand value of medico-legal claims and the contingent liabilities to R20.8bn as of the end of March.”

Verifying the cases would continue under a legal intervention strategy developed to address the negligence claims, with collusion between lawyers and doctors said to be the biggest contributors to the problem, she said.

“We have found that certain hospitals have rent-a-child syndicates, while in some hospitals doctors and lawyers collude to fleece the department of money that should be used to provided services. We are investigating these claims.”

The MEC said she was happy that she and her team had been able to reduce the number of litigations, adding that this assisted the department in saving money.

Since the department managed to curb the litigation, they were able to put the money to good use.

“We are improving our record filing system to avoid losing files and this ends up costing us cases in courts because some people literally pay nurses to steal files at the hospitals.

“We have also taken a decision to strengthen the systems of recognition. The system would also help health professionals in tracking people coming from outside the country and provide an idea of how many had been assisted and where. The system would also safeguard against patients who move from one health facility to another to get more medication.”

In previous years, the department had seen a significant rise in patient negligence cases in public hospitals which jumped from 4 701 in 2020 to 6 910 in 2021 – a 47% increase over the year. The Gauteng Health Department had received 157 new summonses in the past year which claimed R1.6bn for medical negligence.