Question NW2830 to the Minister of Health

Reply:

After realizing that there are problems of patients waiting time at Brits hospital in Madibeng, North West Province, an intervention team was deployed by the Administrator on 29.10.2020. Tet ream identified issues for intervention and implementation:

• The long waiting time could be attributed to the fact that the hospital does not have the gateway clinic, as it is the center of the town. Long-term plan is to develop a Gateway Clinic at Brits Hospital to relieve the load of non-urgent or minor cases self-referring to the hospital.

• There was poor management of the Outpatients which contributed to the delay in attending to them and thus increasing the waiting time.

• Implementation of the Integrated Clinical Services Management approach;
• Uni-directional patient flow to be mapped out and introduced which includes screening and sorting of patients;
• Use of a queue marshall to improve patient movement;
• Introduction of a patient appointment system to decrease long waiting times.

• Casualty

• Appropriate triage protocol to be followed to avoid patient waiting in wrong queues or a delay in attending to the serious patients.
• The clinicians will be allocated based on rosters which was developed as a response to identified needs and peak times.

END.