The Compensation Fund (CF), a public entity of the Department of Labour responsible to deal with occupational diseases and injuries, was beginning to turn the corner to address the long-standing “albatross” of piling medical claims, the Fund’s Commissioner Shadrack Mkhonto said in Cape Town today, 24 July.
The Commissioner and the Department of Labour Director-General, Nkosinathi Nhleko and a team of senior managers in the department were responding to Portfolio Committee on Labour queries - on what has been done to rectify late payments of Hospital Groups, which resulted in medical staff threatening to withdraw services, and how other issues afflicting the Fund have been dealt with?
Since January 2013 up to date the Compensation Fund had processed and paid an amount of R325 529 845.00 to private hospitals.
An amount of R6 771 751 has been paid to public hospitals. The Fund has decentralised payment of medical accounts to all the provinces and medical accounts are processed and paid there; and the Fund recently undertook a project on registration and adjudication of claims which resulted in payment of hospital accounts.
Mkhonto told the Committee that EOH, an information technology service provider to the department, and the Fund had been able to put in place a project to clear the backlog.
“We are now comfortably on track to pay medical accounts,” Mkhonto said the Fund had also been in constant engagement with the Business Unity South Africa and the SA Medical Association on how it is dealing with the backlog.
“We have learnt lessons. Our intention is not to sustain such a backlog in the future. The emphasis in future will be on the worker. No worker must stay longer without getting treatment,” Mkhonto said.
The Return on Earnings (RoE), a web-based facility to allow employers to file annual returns that was started in March 2013 and was beginning to yield results. The CF in the period 2013/14 from April to June had collected R4,7 billion compared with R3,8 billion and R5,7-billion collected in the 2011/12 and 2012/13 financial years respectively.
Mkhonto told the Portfolio Committee on Labour that after glitches in the system caused by manual processing, the CF had decided to go back to the drawing board to pilot the Rand Mutual Assurance system. Mkhonto said the Rand Mutual system was a “tried and tested” system used in mining.
He said he hoped the new system would be implemented with the support of EOH.
“We have begun to make interventions, and to date the impact could be felt,” Mkhonto said.
Nhleko said the department had taken time to reflect and noted concerns raised by stakeholders. He said the department was making an effort to respond to inefficiency and other problems currently faced by the Fund.
The Director-General said to prevent a regress and lapses, the department would be announcing a new information technology service provider. Nhleko said the department had started building the required internal expertise to manage its own IT environment, and would eventually settle for a hybrid IT model.
Portfolio Committee on Labour Chairman Eleck Nchabeleng cautioned that service delivery failure cannot be tolerated. Nchabeleng called for speedy action to address backlogs.
The CF has announced that the name of a full-time Chief Financial Officer will be made soon.
