Durban - The Department of Health in KwaZulu-Natal plans to move some of its hospitals to eHealth within the next year as it looks to improve the quality of service given to patients.
MEC for Finance in KZN Peggy Nkonyeni announced during her budget statement on Friday that the Department of Health received the second-highest portion of the provincial budget at 34.7%, amounting to R50.7 billion.
She was tabling her budget for the 2023/2024 financial year.
“The department is targeting 42 out of 70 hospitals to move on to the eHealth system in the coming year,” said Nkonyeni.
“The eHealth system helps to ultimately reduce patients’ waiting times, address the challenge of missing and damaged patients’ files, and also improve the department’s ability to defend itself against medico-legal claims,” she said.
A few years ago, Health MEC Nomagugu Simelane proposed the implementation of a paperless system that would ensure patient care was seamless.
Nkonyeni detailed numerous other steps the provincial health department would be taking to improve health care.
She said the department planned to increase the average number of daily operational ambulances from 179 to 200 by March 31 next year.
“The department plans to implement a clinical outreach policy. The purpose of this is for medical specialists from the large hospitals such as Greys, Ngwelezane and King Edward VIII to travel to smaller hospitals to provide specialist services, to teach doctors in those hospitals, and to attend to complicated cases,” she said.