Engen Medical Aid to be administered by Discovery
Discovery Health will take over the administration of Engen Medical Benefit Fund with effect from 1 July 2018.
Uncategorized
Uncategorized
Health Records are mandatory for ALL Patients
The SA Defence department will have to pay damages for the failure of military doctors to diagnose the 13-year-old son of a firefighter with swine flu, the Western Cape High Court has ruled.
Torrian Marthinus, now 20, was left untreated for almost a week in August 2009 and developed meningitis – which led to seizures that affected his academic performance. The amount of damages to be paid has not been decided, notes a Weekend Argus report. Marthinus was sent to a military hospital since his father was a military firefighter.
‘The doctors did not have the treatment notes from our client’s previous visits to the hospital before them,’ Tzvi Brivik, Marthinus’s attorney, is quoted as saying, noting: ‘This placed them at a disadvantage when rendering appropriate… medical care. They had to rely on the patient, who was a minor, or his father, who was not medically trained, to provide a medical history.’ He added: ‘The Health Act 61 of 2003 obliges a health establishment to ensure health records containing prescribed information are created and maintained for every user of its health service.’
Brivik said Health Professions Council of SA guidelines said patient records had to be kept, including handwritten notes. While tests established he had swine flu, doctors treating him failed to diagnose the meningitis until about six days later.
Only 1 out of 4 people in the WC have medical aid cover
The Western Cape Health Department has said 75% of people in the province are currently without medical aid cover.
News24 reports that the department was presenting to Parliament’s portfolio committee on health, providing a status update in its efforts to implement the “Ideal Clinic Initiative”.
Department head Dr Beth Engelbrecht told the committee the province is moving away from only treating illnesses and would now be focusing on wellness to help those uninsured. “The department really has to reflect on how to do business differently because we sit with these realities of a reduced budget but an increase in patient growth. Our strategic goal for 2030 is on wellness and not specifically the treatment of disease.”
The report says the Western Cape Health Department has a R20bn budget to treat its 6.3m people. The province has the highest life expectancy rate per capita in the country, at 66 years.
However, the report says, when it comes to HIV and Aids, people aged 24-35 are still the worst affected. There was also a worrying increase in contraction of the virus among adolescent girls, the only provincial increase in the country in that age bracket. HIV/Aids was, however, no longer the main cause of death in children under 5, now accounting for 7% of child deaths, falling 13% since 2000. It was however still the leading cause of maternal deaths, with 36% linked to the virus. Almost half of maternal deaths are avoidable, the department said.
At least 58% of South Africa’s deaths were linked to chronic illnesses and 32.7% of women were obese in the province, which was 8% higher than the national average, while a shocking 80% of people with mental disorders do not receive treatment.
Like the Eastern Cape, the province also had budget constraints. Engelbrecht is quoted in the report as saying that the department’s real term budget was actually decreasing due to a renewed wage agreement with its 31 300 staff members.
Provincial health MEC Noma-French Mbombo told the committee that the only way for the province to get ahead of its issues was to focus on prevention and the “road to wellness”. “When it comes to health, we have to focus on the poorest of the poor. Unlike other departments, in health, we have to look after citizens from the cradle to the grave, from the oldest to the youngest.”
With regard to the Ideal Clinic Initiative, a policy initiated by Parliament in 2013, the province said it was hoping to achieve the status in all its clinics by March 2017, with training having already been received by some staff in earlier this year.
Why we need more black doctors
Why we need more black doctors in medicine
When you meet with your doctor you have a certain expectation in your head, that after 4 years of undergrad and 3-7 years of residency experience this person will be able to help me. But for black men in America, this is not always the case.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention black men have the lowest life expectancy of any ethnic group in the United States. The reasons vary from high incarceration rates to barriers to health care access, but even before they are sick black men struggle with receiving preventative care. One study shows that a large reason for this chasm in service is due to a lack of patient-doctor communication. Black male patients are more likely to discuss their problems and concerns with black doctors and, black doctors are more likely to write additional observations about their black patients.
A black doctor took to Twitter to write about this serious problem in a thread. He explained in detail an exchange he had with a black patient, which highlighted exactly why diversity in the medical field is so necessary. The user, @Oga_DoctorBlue was able to identify his patient’s facial expressions and code-switch (the “process of shifting from one linguistic code (a language or dialect) to another, depending on the social context or conversational setting”) in order to better communicate and meet the man’s needs.
Even with increased efforts for diversity in some schools, the numbers for black men applicants in medical school has remained stagnant since 1978.
Scroll down below to read this very important thread and let us know your thoughts in the comments!
Keyhealth placed under provision curatorship
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