Thomas Johnson - Medical Blog

Bhekikisa Centre for Health Journalism has again run an article about the huge medical negligence claims against the state. And again it's been picked up by other media, Daily Maverick and New24 among them.  President Cyril Ramaphosa tasked the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) to investigate the large medical negligence claims against provincial health departments in the country. The investigation, which is not yet complete, is concentrating on alleged fictitious medical claims including by patients who never made them.  The health department has long complained negligence claims are the result of touting by lawyers and the legal profession is abusing the system. But seldom if ever has it admitted they're the result of a dysfunctional and broken public health system. Bhekikisa accepted government's tendentious claim it's mostly the result of "dodgy lawyers", "touting" and allegedly "stolen medical records".  This makes me really angry. Now...

 Auditor-general of South Africa Tsakani Maluleke recently released the results of 2023/24 municipal audits. Only 34 municipalities received a clean audit. Clean audit is an SA public audit definition of: financially unqualified and full compliance with legislation (mainly but not exclusively PFMA, MFMA and Treasury regulations) and auditee's ie client's own performance objectives. Incidentally, on the objectives, the AG takes the client's word for their completion or not; it's a tick-box exercise for AG as most of auditing is.  When Helen "Godzille" Zille was Western Cape premier she railed against audits as being an obstacle to efficient administration (really). She used the example of missing library books in the AG's audit of the WC Library department's financials. This was ignorant nonsense. Government departments, politicians and media get in a froth about "clean audits". When government audit results are released, media and politicians...