The MMC for Health and Social Development, Dr Mpho Phalatse has indicated that measures are being taken to deal with a scourge she labels ‘medical shopping’ at local clinics.
She described medical shopping as ‘patients’ who hop from one clinic to the next to request medications which are apparently exported to neighbouring countries.
Mpho made this reference after Zandspruit clinic staff members caught and opened a case of fraud against a woman who attempted to use a ‘borrowed’ identity card, which its owner tried to reclaim after the fraudster was caught.
However, the incident was no surprise to the MMC, who said, “This happens all the time. We get people coming into clinics to do what we call ‘medical shopping’. For instance, they ask for ARVs and after receiving them they go to the next clinic for more and then send the medication back home”.
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She alluded that the scourge is aggravated by the long-standing issue of undocumented people in the city. “There are many undocumented people in our midst who come into our clinics and when we ask for documentation, sometimes they rotate the document among a few people,” she cited the problem.
Fortunately, Mpho explained that the City wasn’t sitting back and doing nothing to eradicate the problem. “Part of the solution is the electronic record system we are busy implementing. This system cannot be cheated because of the use of biometrics,” she explained.
She elaborated that the system will use finger prints to prevent the scourge. “You can’t give away your finger print to the next person and that’s how we will be able to identify people, whether they have an identity document or not,” she further explained, also adding that the system will be able to inform them whether a patient has been at another clinic to get the same medication.
She went on to say that the Executive Mayor, Herman Mashaba, has called on the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee for Home Affairs to help the City in dealing with illegal immigration. “On 22 October, Mashaba and a delegation from City will appear before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee for Home Affairs to discuss all the challenges that we have with illegal immigration in the City of Johannesburg, including what we see happening in our clinics,” she explained.
She also made it clear that in terms of health care they cannot turn away anyone who is sick, whether documented or not. “If you think about infectious diseases – if I don’t treat someone living with an infectious disease because they don’t have documentation they will go back and infect other people that have the right papers, so it does not make sense not to treat people,” she explained.
However, the catch in treating everyone is that doing so comes at cost to the City, according to Mpho. “When it comes to funding, we only receive funding for documented people. We are always underfunded, which is why we always receive complaints from our clinics because there is a disconnect between the funding we receive vs the number of patients we treat,” Mpho explained, adding that they’ve started having discussions at provincial level to discuss a funding model which speaks to the demand for health care in the city if they are forced to treat everyone.
She also touched on the issue of ill-treatment at the clinics, saying it was unacceptable conduct that is taken seriously. “All City employees are subject to a code of conduct and such incidents need to be reported and be dealt with. We want all our patients to be welcomed with warm hands at our clinics, we don’t want any patient to feel scared for any reason to approach one of our clinics,” she said.
She concluded by advising patients to report poor services from the nurses to the facility manager at the clinic.
