By REGINALD KANYANE
18 June 2025- The Northern Cape MEC for Health, Maruping Lekwene said his department’s continued efforts are underway to ensure effective access to healthcare services, quality of service standards and responsiveness to community needs and efficiency in the system. Lekwene said his department works tirelessly towards improving and sustaining the ideal healthcare status of facilities throughout the province.
Lekwene further said this noteworthy move, as informed by the ‘Ideal Health Facilities Realisation and Maintenance (IHFRM) Programme’, aims at ensuring that all public health facilities meet specific norms and standards, which among others include suitable infrastructure, adequate medical and surgical supplies and efficient administrative processes for the provision of quality healthcare services to the communities. He added that, as part of the department’s strategy to monitor the implementation of this important programme, they have launched support visits to the Madoyle and Phuthanang clinics in the Sol Plaatje Local Municipality.
“These are two of the six facilities previously identified by the department for the implementation of the Bokamoso Digitisation Pilot Project, which seeks to implement the provincial e-Health strategy, to enhance service delivery and to improve patient experience in our facilities.
“Over and above the rehabilitation and upgrading of the facilities infrastructure, the department has implemented a fully integrated approach for the provision of equitable and sustainable health services in public facilities,” said Lekwene.
He said factors such as health technology, management and personnel, remain an integral part of this important programme. Lekwene said that will ensure the facilities are able to meet the required level of care and ensure universal health coverage.
“In the last financial year, our department conducted ideal status determination for 159 out of 161 facilities. During the same period under review, the Ideal Clinic Status programme improved from 75 in the last quarter of 2024, to 84 in the first quarter of 2025.
“Five facilities achieved silver, eight achieved Gold and 71achieved platinum. A total of 41 public health facilities have been accredited by Office of Health Standards and Compliance (OHSC),” he said.
Lekwene said it is important to note that not all facilities have been assessed by the Office of Health Standards and Compliance in our province. He said the Ideal Health Facility Realization and Maintenance Framework and OHSC tool are aligned for all required domains.
“Furthermore, the department internally established the Permanent Perfect Teams for Ideal Clinic Realisation and Maintenance Technical Working Group (PPTICRM/TWG) Committee.
“The purpose of this committee is to work towards improving our performance in attaining ideal clinic/facility status and its maintenance,” said Lekwene.
He said this will be done through understanding the ideal facility framework, periodic analysis of the ideal performance against targets, provision of strategic guidance to districts, lobbying resources from related stakeholders and making recommendations for additional resource mobilization based on the critical situation analysis of each district. Lekwene said the Centralised Chronic Medication Distribution and Dispensation (CCMDD) programme is continuing well with over 118 000 chronic patients registered on the programme.
“The aim of this programme is to decant stable chronic patients from our healthcare facilities by means of allocating their pre-packed medication for collection at the closest facilities identified as pickup points.
“It is for this reason that the department wants to ensure that patients access quality health services at their convenience in terms of choice and time. Following these support visits, the Executive Management will be visiting public healthcare facilities in the Phokwane Local Municipality to monitor the Contracting Unit for the Primary Health Care project,” he said.
Lekwene said this project is to test the implementation of the capitation payment model for primary healthcare through a proof-of-concept phase, which will be used to test NHI policies, systems and processes on the ground. He said the project also aims to assess the practicability and scalability of the designated elements for a CUP, while identifying opportunities for variation and enhancement before further rollout to other districts.
The Guardian 