A perfect storm results in delays in surgical waiting lists at Helen Joseph
Helen Joseph Hospital stresses that emergency surgeries are not affected by delays.
Helen Joseph Hospital struggles to perform amidst pressure from a ‘perfect storm’ says DA shadow minister for health, Jack Bloom.
Surgery waiting lists are problematic, “I’m afraid that some of these lists are only going to shorten because our patients die while they waiting for their operation.”
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He said the hospital needs to work around the clock and take special measures to improve access to surgeries and find a way to involve private hospitals to perform surgery on public patients.
He added, “The hospital is still recovering from the vast influx of patients following the temporary closure of the Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Hospital after the massive fire in April last year. In addition, there was a disruption to scheduled surgeries because of the Covid-19 pandemic. And now on top of this, there’s the load-shedding and also lack of water because there have been water shortages in the area as well.”
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The hospital’s CEO, Dr Relebohile Ncha said, “There are no delays with emergency surgery cases and the hospital has all of the equipment it needs to run and perform operations.”
“Surgical waiting lists are impacted by a number of challenges including Covid-19 where elective cases were deferred, and with the closure of Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital. We had to focus a lot on doing emergency cases rather than electives and this has increased the waiting times for surgery.”
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Speaking generally about waiting times for patients to access care, she said, “We have dire emergency cases which take less than five minutes to be attended to, these are classified as Priority 1 patients, who are critically ill and get attended to immediately.
Then there are patients classified under Priority 2 and 3 who are attended to within 160 minutes. These are standards determined by the National Department of Health benchmarks on waiting times. This is why we encourage patients to present at a tertiary healthcare facility on a referral basis and after seeking care at lower healthcare facilities within their respective drainage areas to minimize these waiting times.”
