Page 40 - Provincial Treasury Estimates.pdf

Overview of the Provincial Revenue and Expenditure (OPRE) Financial Year 2023/24
Health

The provincial health department has committed to rolling out a comprehensive health turnaround strategy
towards achieving the goal of a long and healthy life for all, through a health system that is digitally enabled,
data driven and offering quality health services. The critical elements of the strategy include a sustained
focus on financial sustainability, integrated medico-legal strategy, service delivery platform realignment,

digitalisation & e-health to building healthier communities.

The implementation of the turnaround has already yielded positive results, which include:
x Curtailment of the hemorrhaging of funds from the health budget by limiting upfront, lump sum
medico-legal settlements. Two legal defense strategies have been critical in this regard - the Stay of

Writs and public health defense medico-legal strategies. The Noyila public health defense judgment
has found in favour of the ECDOH, where the department has to provide the beneficiary with medical

services and supplies at a reasonable standard which the beneficiary requires.
x Provincial Health has managed to reduce by 96% in-year irregular expenditure to under R3.4 million
in 2022/23 from R104million in 2021/22, through improvements in SCM systems and controls.

x The provincial health department has re-prioritized its budget and made available R544 million over
the MTEF towards maintenance and acquisitions of much needed health machinery and equipment.

x The Health department is currently progressing well with its digitalization program and has rolled out
HMS2 to 19 hospitals, registered over 5 million patients; admitted more than 300,000 patient to
wards and processed over 600,000 out-patients. The system also includes the e-Liability and e-PAIA

systems so that facilities have live data pertaining to the medico-legal risk.
x Of the 2941 mostly health professional posts in the Health department’s annual recruitment plan

(ARP), 1 938 appointments have been made.

To further assist with the rollout of the strategy and for Health to recover operations of key health

programmes that were partially delayed by Covid 19 lockdowns (e.g. HIV TB treatment) the following
allocations have been made.

An amount of R42 million has also been allocated in 2023/24 to insulate some identified Health facilities
during the current sustained load shedding period. An additional R967.768 million in 2023/24 financial year

and R3.031 billion over the 2023/24 MTEF to support the Provincial Department of Health for the
compensation of employees, service backlogs including antiretroviral therapy and TB medicine and other

health goods and services.

23