​The MEC for Health and Wellness, Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko has expressed satisfaction with the state and functionality of the Far East Rand Hospital mortuary. 

This comes after the MEC conducted a service delivery oversight visit to the hospital’s mortuary which came under scrutiny following allegations about the functionality of the fridges and cold storage facilities. 

“I am satisfied with the work that is being done at the facility. There is a lot of improvement from where it was 12 months ago. There are no issues with the facility’s mortuary and cold storage facilities. In fact, the hospital’s mortuary has surplus capacity to store bodies and has no backlogs. 

“We always appreciate it when the public raises concerns and highlight areas they are unhappy with so that we can attend to these, but equally, the complaints must be based on fact and not on speculation so as to enable us to implement interventions where necessary,” said MEC Nkomo-Ralehoko. 

Currently, the hospital’s mortuary fridges and cold storage facilities are in good functional state and the turn-around for families collecting bodies is normally 12-72 hours unless the body is a of a pauper which then would require other processes such as tracing before a burial process would follow involving other stakeholders such as the municipalities. 

The mortuary can accommodate 89 bodies in storage and are designed to store bodies and keep them in good condition for a period of more than six (6) months. 

Only 6 cold storage fridges are currently not in use as they are undergoing statutory maintenance. An active maintenance contract is in place up to March 2024. This is to ensure a quicker turnaround time whenever there are faults. 

Meanwhile, the MEC used the opportunity to get appraised on how the facility is doing on the uptake of the Health Information System (HIS). Far East Rand Hospital is one of 37 Gauteng public hospitals, and 31 Community Healthcare Centres (CHCs) using the one-patient-one-file tracking system. 

“This system has improved patient administration, file management and the process of referrals across our hospitals and community healthcare centres. Once a patient is registered on the system, a Patient Master Index (PMI) number is generated, and it is used as a unique identifier. 

“The PMI number plays an important role of enabling the one-patient-onefile tracking, a digital file is created on cloud which enables the tracking of the patient’s history and movement at all the HIS-live in hospitals and CHCs,” said the MEC. 

The system is user friendly and is not difficult to navigate and understand. It has assisted managers with retrieving accurate reports and help hospitals record and monitor incoming revenue. Hospitals are also able to allocate and monitor bed occupancy using this system. 

The SMS functionality of the HIS system assists with informing and sending reminders to patients about booked appointments and follow-ups. 

 Ends/ 

Issued by the Gauteng Department of Health