Fix the damn system!’– Johannesburg’s tertiary hospital doctors

Abstract

Poor planning, incompetent budgeting and dysfunctional administration are killing patients, prolonging suffering and driving some specialists, who could otherwise deliver world-class medicine, to the point of resignation at Johannesburg’s two top hospitals.
The frustration of doctors who try year in and year out to fight for the replacement or repair of vital equipment that would enable them to save and/or properly treat patients, often simmers just below boiling point at Chris Hani Baragwanath (Bara) and Johannesburg hospitals. Administration is so bad that several junior doctors in new posts this year were simply ‘not captured’, resulting in their being unpaid at the end of January. The problem lies in a succession of what doctors cynically call ‘turnstile’ Health MECs, politically responsible only to their provincial premier (and not a sympathetic national health minister) and sometimes poorly qualified hospital CEOs financially in ransom to the notorious Gauteng Shared Service Centre (GSSC).