14 Aug 2017

Minister of Health and Wellness, Ms Dorcas Makgato has called on the ministry top brass to reflect on ways to bring abour efficiency in their service to the public.

Speaking at a leadership forum in Gaborone, Ms Makgato said as healthcare workers, they had to reflect on whether they had made the right decisions with regard to rehabilitating health infrastructure, among others.

She said “health care workers should also see if there is any mindset change in the way they allocate and manage resources to meet population needs.”

Ms Makgato said they should also see if they embraced innovation leading to clinical excellence and if they were doing enough to facilitate private sector investment in health and identify areas inwhich  they could partner with the private sector to grow the economy.

“There is a lot of anxiety especially from people on the ground to see and feel the impact of proposed initiatives,” she said.
She said her concern was the pace at which they were moving in relation to restructuring implementation, facilities management, attraction and retention strategy.

The minister urged them to critically assess the position they had made on upgrading to degree programme at institute of health sciences and collaboration with the University of Botswana, Central Medical Stores privatization or regionalisation, conditions of service and part-time for specialists.

Ms Makgato said they needed to agree on key indicators that defined wellness within their mandate and strategies and also monitor and evaluate the generation of own data to inform their decisions on current health trends.

Speaking about clients perception, Assistant Minister of Health and Wellness Mr Dikgang Makgalemele said their clients viewed them differently with the scale tilting to not being happy with their performance and behaviour.

Mr Makgalemele said this emerged from the mystery shopping, Kgotla meetings, mini-surveys, spot checks and customer feedback conducted at some of their facilities.

He said since April to July this year, a total of 60 cases had been reported through their call centre and 48 of those had been resolved while 12 were still being investigated citing that the most common complaints were on delayed service and shortage of doctors.

Mr Makgalemele noted that the major concern was low response rate and lack of follow ups on clients’ complaints.

He said that even though fewer complaints had been reported regarding unavailability of drugs, they continued to experience shortage of commodities at their facilities.

He said at times that arose from ‘our inefficiencies’ citing a case where one facility would not have a particular commodity for days or weeks while the neighbouring facility in the same district would have more than adequate in stock.

“There is serious need for inventory management such that they maintain adequate stock and promptly respond to refill before they run out of stock,” he said.

He said hospital facilities were not desirable and that clients complained of dilapidated buildings, long turnaround time on maintenance and shortage of vehicles, ineffective vehicle maintenance and management. ENDS