Glad to hear hospital CEO is gone

RETIRED NURSING SISTER of Bonaero Park writes:

For anyone who has had the misfortune of being a patient at Tembisa Hospital it was heartening to hear that the Hospital’s CEO, Dr Daisy Pakane, has been removed from her duties with immediate effect after a spate of complaints of atrocious service levels and medical malpractice at that disgraceful facility.

The question to be asked is why has it taken so long for the Gauteng Health MEC, Qwedani Mahlangu, to act against the abject management after her visit to the hospital. The situation has been dire for years.

Tembisa Hospital has had a shocking record of patient neglect and abuse, and in 2013 had the worst statistics in the province for Serious Adverse Events (SAE’s) – a shocking 71 in total. A SAE is when a patient suffers serious deterioration or death due to neglect or actions by the hospital or medical practitioners.

Nothing much has improved since 2013 and people are terrified to subject themselves to the frightening ordeal of being (mis)treated there. It’s a shocking situation of mismanagement by the Gauteng local government authorities.

MEC Mahlangu is notorious for being a glib spin artist who makes grandiose empty promises to improve the crisis of patient neglect and mortalities festering under her leadership. The ANC government’s idiotic closure of Kempton Park Hospital, which could have eased the pressure on the dysfunctional Tembisa Hospital, and its abject failure to re-open Kempton Park Hospital well over a decade later, is indicative of the general malaise of misgovernance.

Any half effective administration would hold hospitals to account with regular unannounced assessment visits by anonymous inspectors, and remove all the dysfunctional staffing where necessary. Apparently Pakane has not been fired but has merely been redeployed to another facility where she could possibly inflict her incompetence on other unfortunate patient victims at her new posting.