ConCourt to be asked to rule on soaring claims
The Eastern Cape Department of Health will approach the Constitutional Court for a ruling on whether it should pay multibillion-rand medico-legal claims at the expense of funding health services.
Several high-profile advocates and constitutional experts will lead what The Herald calls a ground-breaking application.
The legal matter is one of many strategies the Premier’s executive committee decided at the weekend to implement to fight medico-legal claims in the province, which are threatening to wipe out large parts of the Health Department’s budget.
‘We are going to ask the court to make a ruling that the provision of health services must be prioritised and that the government not be asked to make huge lump-sum payments when we lose a case,’ Premier Oscar Mabuyane’s spokesperson, Mvusi Sicwetsha, said.
‘We will instead offer to provide packages to claimants throughout their lives.’
The plan was welcomed by the Medico-Legal Association of SA, but its Eastern Cape chair, attorney Henry Lerm, raised his concerns over ‘hints’ in the plan that the department would not be honouring court orders.
Sicwetsha said the main aim was to stop the payment of lump sums for medical negligence and offer on-going assistance to patients instead. He said the Office of the Premier would, from now on, manage medico-legal claims against the department.
‘We want to close the tap, not just keep on mopping the floors,’ Sicwetsha said.
As part of the strategy for dealing with the ballooning costs of medico-legal claims, the executive committee had established a task team comprising senior officials to create a lasting, systematic solution to the medico-legal challenges, notes the report in The Herald.
Sicwetsha said the cost of medico-legal claims had increased exponentially in the past five years, with a total of R2.2bn paid out since the 2014/2015 financial year.
The plan also includes approaching the Presidency to get the State Liability Amendment Bill signed into law. The Bill makes provision for the payment of structured damages payments instead of lump sums.
It was also decided that to prevent lawyers directly taking money from the department’s bank accounts, as happens now, the provincial Treasury would engage Standard Bank – working through the state legal advisers – on an amendment of the banking contract.
Article disclaimer: While we have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of this article, it is not intended to provide final legal advice as facts and situations will differ from case to case, and therefore specific legal advice should be sought with a lawyer.
