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Health department directs patients to proper complaints channels
The Department of Health has urged Mamelodi Hospital patients to report their complaints to a quality assurance officer when they are not happy with the service at health facilities.
This comes as a recent visitor claimed to have been made to wait hours to be assisted by the hospital. However, the department weighed in saying the current waiting time was 60 minutes according to the benchmark target and the hospital is meeting the set target.
Vincent Monyai from Mamelodi claimed that he had to wait more than two hours to get medication for his wife.
He said that staff members working at the Mamelodi Regional Hospital pharmacy allegedly mistreated patients by making them wait long hours to get their medication.
Monyai said he accompanied his wife to the hospital for her routine check-up recently, however, this resulted in them allegedly being mistreated and threatened by a staff member working at the pharmacy.
He said he handed in his wife’s file at the pharmacy, however to his shock, other patients who came after him received their medication and left.
Monyai said he approached the staff working at the pharmacy to complain about the waiting period and the fact that the one-hour waiting period was long gone as his wife was complaining about leg pains and feeling dizzy.
“One of the male staff members was so rude to me. The rude staff member failed to at least explain what the delay was. Instead, he opted to be rude and told me he was not working for me and I should wait like any other patient in the hospital.”
Monyai further told the staff member that his wife was not feeling well and was dizzy, but the staff member just looked at her once and told me: ‘She is fine; there is nothing wrong with her’.
“The staff member further said he wanted to teach me a lesson, and they would give it to her in their own time. He even threatened to jump over the counter, and to manhandle me in front of everyone; he was not scared of me. The staff member further told his colleagues to place my wife’s file aside and they will help me in their own time,” he said.
He claimed that the reason for this was due to him stressing his complaints at hospital staffers.
Monyai said the staff member even called security guards when he wanted to complain to one of the seniors in the hospital.
Rekord reached out to the Gauteng health department spokesperson, Motalatale Modiba who said the hospital was not aware of this complaint as the clinical manager, who was on duty on the day did not receive any report on this matter.
Modiba said the department only discovered that one patient had endured a longer waiting time the day than that which is normally benchmarked due to him servicing a payment late.
“He was advised to make a payment and when he came back the file had to follow the pharmacy process as follows: a file is taken inside the pharmacy, then it passes through several people who pack, label, sign, and dispense.”
Modiba however stressed that the current waiting time was 60 minutes as set out by the benchmark target and that the hospital had been meeting the set target.
“We urge our patients to report their complaints to the quality assurance office when they are not happy with the service in our health facilities,” said Modiba.
Modiba said in terms of customer care, the Gauteng Department of Health has a Quality Assurance Team that can be reached for any hospital or clinic complaints. Call the 24-hour customer line on 0800 203 886 (toll-free number), [email protected] or [email protected] or sms: 35023.
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