More lawyers to help health department fight bogus medical claims

The provincial health department is upping the ante in its fight against bogus medical negligence claims, after announcing a mass hiring of legal practitioners to fight the practice.

Spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo said they needed to strengthen their legal services.

Year after year the department’s budget is gutted by medicolegal claims. The department faces a contingent liability of more than R38bn due to hundreds of claims. It paid out almost R1bn in settlements in the last financial year alone.

Cerebral palsy accounts for a large chunk of the claims, the department said last year.

At the time, the department said it was not easy to retain staff, due to the rural nature of the province.

Kupelo said: “The strengthening of the legal unit will go a long way in enhancing the department’s capacity and ensuring dubious medicolegal claims are picked up and dealt with to ensure they never see the inside of a courtroom.”

He said their legal unit worked with the special litigation unit (SIU) in the office of the premier.

“It would appear that unscrupulous lawyers have colluded with unethical employees to target the department and make fraudulent claims, costing the department billions of rands.

“The SIU has been appointed to investigate these suspected fraudulent claims.

“The loss of funds from the budget that went towards lump sum settlements affected the cash flow of the department and affected the quality of the services we offer,” Kupelo said.

He said the department was now able to hire more legal staff after it made a R5m budget available for the unit.

“The positions include a chief director, a director, and four deputy directors.

“The deputy directors will be allocated to the Nelson Mandela Academic Hospital and Gqeberha to provide support for health districts.

“Some of the highly litigated facilities are in OR Tambo district, so the placement of deputy directors in the district is expected to lead to an improvement.

“The appointments are in line with the department’s integrated medicolegal strategy, which also includes improving clinical services to prevent negligent cases.”

The department recently received a boost after it won a case against a claimant who sued the department for R35.4m.

Instead of paying out the lump sum, the department was directed by judge Robert Griffiths to instead provide future medical care for the claimant’s child living with cerebral palsy.

Court documents reveal that settlements often do not reach desperately ill and disabled child beneficiaries.

In just one example, a single firm of attorneys paid just 24% of almost R500m in settlements to beneficiaries.