The City of Joburg is to spend R30-million – a once-off budgetary allocation – in the 2017/18 financial year on the procurement of a new software that will result in patient records being transferred to electronic databases.
This is done to enhance the administration of healthcare in City clinics.
The move, articulated in the 2017/18 Integrated Development Plan (IDP), is part of the City’s Primary Healthcare System aimed at providing quality, sustainable and accessible healthcare in line with its-pro poor agenda.
In March and April this year, the City hosted more than 30 IDP meetings across all seven regions to enable residents to air their views, including on issues concerning the delivery of primary healthcare.
The Health Information System (HIS) will free healthcare staff from endless paperwork so they can devote most of their time to attending to core healthcare matters.
The digitisation and preservation of records project seeks to establish a single and complete body of patient records easily accessible to healthcare practitioners.
The move comes in the wake of the successful piloting of extended operating hours at Princess Crossing Clinic in Roodepoort in Region C between November 2016 and February 2017 to improve access to healthcare.
Spearheaded by Executive Mayor Herman Mashaba, the four-month pilot phase saw 10 791 patients visiting the clinic. Of these, just over 26% (or 2 822) were attended to during the extended hours. “This means that nearly 3 000 of our residents in the catchment area were able to access basic healthcare services that they were previously unable to access,” states the IDP document.
The extended operating hours have since been rolled out to five more clinics across the city, including Hikhensile Clinic in Region A; Randburg Clinic in Region B, Zandspruit Clinic in Region C; Freedom Park Clinic in Region G and 80 Albert Street Clinic in Region F.
This has also resulted in the employment of more staff to ensure the clinics are well-capacitated.
The IDP document states that in the “near future” all clinics will adopt the extended-hours approach with comprehensive health and social services on offer. “Through this project, the City will aim to ensure that the poor and most vulnerable in our city are able to access quality, basic healthcare and ensure that all our residents have equal opportunity to lead healthy lives,” reads the document.
Over and above this, the City’s Health Department, which has been allocated a capital expenditure budget of R111.9-million for the 2017-2018 financial year, is to refurbish and upgrade several existing primary healthcare facilities and build a number of new ones throughout the city.
