Hope at last for crisis-ridden Gauteng academic hospitals?

A national pilot scheme aims to give power back to clinicians and hospital managers, unraveling the crisis of mismanagement, poor planning and endemic corruption that has long compromised and even prevented healthcare delivery at Johannesburg's top tertiary hospitals. The pilot turnaround strategy will begin with the embattled Gauteng health department, and ultimately aims to correct the ongoing dysfunction and often-woeful healthcare delivery at tertiary hospitals countrywide. It will be facilitated by Professor Adam Habib, the new Vice Chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), who was hand-picked by a deeply concerned national health minister, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi. Motsoaledi has also instructed Gauteng's warring parties – hospital CEOs and managers, clinical chiefs, provincial MEC Hope Papo and Premier Nomvula Mokonyane – to 'work together to clean up'. The province's tertiary hospitals have lurched from one crisis to another. Previous turnaround strategies hardly made an impact as doctors fought in vain for vital life-saving equipment and/or its repair and maintenance, basic drugs and consumables and sufficient human resources to treat patients. Meanwhile potentially incendiary disputes, such as the conflict over the Remunerative Work Outside the Public Service (RWOPS) programme, soured relationships between hospital staff and provincial government even further and accelerated consultant resignations. In previous probes by Izindaba, Gauteng's tertiary hospital doctors blamed 'turnstile' health MECs (politically responsible only to their provincial premier), poorly qualified hospital CEOs (financially held hostage to the infamously bureaucratic Gauteng Shared Service Centre (GSSC), responsible for all departments' procurement and payment) and evidence of major financial mismanagement by the province (e.g. the 2009/10 Auditor General's disclaimer that they were unable to verify the accuracy and authenticity of R19 billion in transactions). The lack of clear and transparent financial systems, as required by the Public Finance Management Act, generally makes it easier to disguise endemic corruption, theft and waste. All parties Izindaba interviewed blamed much of the wastage on legitimate or semi-legitimate 'middlemen' , who push up prices or actually steal from hospital consignments, including food destined for patients. Professor Yasmien Jeenah is Clinical Head of Psychiatry and Chief of the Medical/ Clinical Advisory Committee at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital, where she has worked for 13 years. She cited the lack of procurement as the biggest headache. '[We need] medication and lots of essential equipment. It's not just major equipment but basic things like syringes and needles, bandages and food. We serve socioeconomically compromised people. They …