Abstract
BackgroundThere is overwhelming evidence that the quality of health care in South Africa has been compromised by various challenges that impact negatively on healthcare quality. Improvement in quality care means fewer errors, reduced delays in care delivery, improvement in efficiency, increased market share and lower cost. Decline in quality health care has caused the public to lose trust in the healthcare system in South Africa.ObjectivesThe purpose of this study was to identify challenges that are being incurred in practice that compromise quality in the healthcare sector, including strategies employed by government to improve the quality of health delivery.MethodLiterature search included the following computer-assisted databases and bibliographies: Medline (Medical Literature Online), EBSCOhost, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Google, Google Scholar and ScienceDirect. Furthermore, websites were used to source policy documents of organisations such as the National Department of Health in South Africa and the World Health Organization.ResultsSeventy-four articles were selected from 1366 retrieved. These articles quantify problems facing quality care delivery and strategies used to improve the healthcare system in South Africa.ConclusionThe findings revealed that there were many quality improvement programmes that had been initiated, adapted, modified and then tested but did not produce the required level of quality service delivery as desired. As a result, the Government of South Africa has a challenge to ensure that implementation of National Core Standards will deliver the desired health outcomes, because achieving a lasting quality improvement system in health care seems to be an arduous challenge.
Highlights
Delivery of quality health care is a constitutional obligation in South Africa (Stuckler, Basu & Mckee 2011:165)
Challenges facing the healthcare system in South Africa that are covered in this article are as follows: unequal distribution of resources, management and leadership crisis, increased disease burden, pull and push factors and slow progress in restructuring the healthcare system, including strategies adopted by government to improve the quality of healthcare delivery
Of the estimated population of 55.5 million (National Department of Health 2016), about 84% of South Africans depend on the public health sector for their healthcare needs (Naidoo 2012:149)
Summary
Delivery of quality health care is a constitutional obligation in South Africa (Stuckler, Basu & Mckee 2011:165). Despite a number of commendable goals having been set by government for improved quality of service delivery in healthcare settings, reports by media and communities in 2009 revealed that services in public health institutions were failing to meet basic standards of care and patient expectations (National Department of Health 2012:4). This has caused the public to lose trust in the healthcare system (Zubane 2011:1).
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