​Thembisa Shologu
Gauteng Health will for the current financial year spend an estimated R55.7 billion towards improving patient experience in all public healthcare centres  which is the department's number one priority.
Tabling the department's budget at the Provincial Legislature on Friday, 19 June, 2020, MEC Dr Bandile Masuku said the funds will also be directed to infrastructure, primary health care emergency services and the reduction of medical litigations. 
"The Patient Experience of Care results for the year 2019/20 saw the Gauteng province attain 82 per cent, which exceeds the national benchmark of 80 per cent. 
"Without investment in infrastructure, we will not deliver on our promise to provide quality healthcare. The planning phase for 10 priority hospitals project has been completed and implementation has begun. We are investing more than R1.1 billion for maintenance and refurbishment of these hospitals this year alone," said MEC Masuku.
Masuku said primary healthcare was the foundation upon which the establishment of Universal Health Coverage in South Africa would be built.
"It is for this reason that we continue to improve on its allocation, from R17.2 million last year to R19 million this year. 
"Furthermore, we continue to provide primary care through the 791-functional fully-fledged ward-based outreach teams and we have introduced the comprehensive chronic medicine programme, which currently benefits 721 350 patients, 84,7% clinics reached the 'ideal clinic' status," said Dr Masuku.
In addition, this year the department is investing more funds to procure additional Emergency Medical Services (EMS) vehicles to the tune of R294 million. 
"This translates to a total of 290 ambulances, categorised as follows: Intermediate Life Support (ILS) ambulances - 90, Multi-Purpose Ambulances (MPA) - 160 and Planned Patient Transport (PPT) - 40.
"In response to the rising safety needs of our EMS personnel, we have fitted 940 EMS vehicles with tracking devices. We remain hopeful that our community outreach programme will help us arrest this negative development.
Lastly, Dr Masuku said the Gauteng government had saved over R38 million by using mediation more than litigation between October 2019 and March 2020. 
"We anticipate the contingent liability of medico-legal cases to be reduced from R22 billion to R19,8 billion in the current financial year," MEC Masuku said.