Hospital strategy project - South Africa
Health Partners International, in conjunction with three South African organisations, implemented a national planning exercise for the South African Department of Health's National Hospital Strategy Project.
This project prepared strategic plans for transforming the country’s 423 public hospitals in order to:
- redress past inequity in hospital access
- deal with serious inefficiency and declining quality of care
- redirect resources to primary health care.
The planning exercise, at national level and with each of the country’s nine provinces, covered five main initiatives:
- The development of national affordability guidelines for rationalising hospital services and staff for the whole country and for all levels of care
- A national policy framework and implementation plan for decentralisation and reform of hospital management
- Defining a labour relations policy in the management of hospitals
- Setting out a national strategy for hospital cost recovery
- Analysis of contracting out in public hospitals.
These initiatives were adopted as the basis for development of South Africa’s hospital services. Substantial implementation has taken place in most provinces across the country.