Call this number to complain about health issues
Call this number to log your health complaints.
Very few people know what to do when they have a health-related complaint.
This is according to DA Gauteng Spokesperson on the Office of the Premier Jack Bloom who said the Gauteng Premier’s complaints hotline has received 716 complaints since January this year.
“This is not a lot of complaints because not many people know the hotline exists,” he said and added that only 24 per cent of the complaints in May were not resolved.
He said he received a written reply from Gauteng Premier David Makhura to his questions that read that all calls made to the previous Health Complaint Hotline are being re-routed to the Premier’s complaint hotline. “While response time has improved from 28 days in January to only two days in May, the resolution rate has fallen from 100 per cent earlier this year to 91 per cent in April and 76 per cent in May.
“The biggest complaint is of poor customer care at hospitals, with 119 such complaints which comprised 19% of all calls,” he said.
According to Bloom there were 46 complaints about being turned away from a health facility, 39 concerned clinical care, 34 people complained about lack of medicine, 28 about staff rudeness and 27 about medical negligence.
“Makhura said delays have been experienced because complaints are first sent to the head office of the Gauteng Department of Health and then to hospitals and clinics,” said Bloom.
He continued by saying that Makhura in his written reply said, “engagement with the Department of Health is underway to escalate cases directly to hospitals and clinics. This process will have a tracking system to enable Senior Management of Head Office to track the resolution of cases through email alerts and notifications.”
“I am concerned about delays in resolving complaints and I hope that the new system improves this. Complaints should be used to detect and fix weaknesses in our health facilities so that there is less cause to use the complaints hotline,” said Bloom.
He encourages people to call the hotline number on 08600 11000 to log a complaint.
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