EDITORIAL: Do more to limit burden of medical negligence
Provincial health departments faced claims of R80.4bn at the end of the past financial year
There is no question that people who are harmed by the health system should be compensated for their injuries, but the sheer scale of the medical-negligence claims against the state threatens to bankrupt provincial health departments. They collectively faced claims of R80.4bn at the end of the past financial year, which if paid out in full would have sliced 41% off their 2018-2019 budgets. The consequences of unbudgeted expenditure are already being felt in provincial health departments. The Eastern Cape, which saw claims against it soar R8.4bn to R24.2bn in the year to March, was forced to make cuts in programmes ranging from emergency services to training to find the R876.7m it had to hand over to the patients it had harmed. The knock-on effect on the quality of services is not hard to see. The public health system's weaknesses are well known but, as the National Treasury told Business Day this week, the exponential rise in claims against the state over the past four years is out ...
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