Waiting times worsen at South Rand Hospital

7 November 2019

Waiting times for patients at the South Rand Hospital have worsened significantly according to official figures released by Gauteng Health MEC Bandile Masuku in a written reply to my questions in the Gauteng Legislature.

The current recorded average waiting times are as follows, with the previous year’s time in brackets:

Waiting time to see a doctor - 68 minutes (40 minutes last year)

Waiting time at pharmacy - 60 minutes (40 minutes last year)

Waiting time for a file - 70 minutes (50 minutes)

Waiting time at Casualty - 122 minutes (104 minutes last year)

This means that patients now wait 1 hour and 8 minutes longer than last year to get a file, see a doctor and get medicine - 3 hours 18 minutes, compared to 2 hours 10 minutes last year.

The only waiting time that went down was for Outpatients - 122 minutes compared to 164 minutes last year.

According to Masuku, the long waiting times are because of the following factors:

Patients refuse down referral to local clinics;

No community health centers around so patients come to the hospital instead;

Limited filing space resulting in file loss or misplacementMasuku says that a booking system is being developed to cater for chronic patients and “file appraisal and file sampling by Records management currently underway.”

He also advocates “patient education and engagement with surrounding clinics on challenges experienced.”

I appreciate that Masuku visited the hospital yesterday but he needs to follow up with real measures that cut down waiting times and fix the other problems at this troubled hospital.

Issued by Jack Bloom, DA Gauteng Shadow Health MEC, 7 November 2019