NCOP
FOR WRITTEN REPLY
QUESTION NO. 667
DATE OF PUBLICATION IN INTERNAL QUESTION PAPER: 02 December 2011
(INTERNAL QUESTION PAPER NO. 40)
Mrs B L Abrahams (DA-Gauteng) to ask the Minister of Health:
(1) Whether, with reference to his reply to question 2684 in the National
Assembly on 14 November 2011, the original tender was intended to
cover all the National Core Standards (NCS) in one year; if not, what
is the position in this regard; if so, (a) what are the reasons for
assessing the priority areas only, (b) who took the decision and (c)
what are the reasons for the decision;
(2) whether the Health Systems Trust (HST) (a) actually carried out the
assessments required to obtain the measures themselves or (b) merely
took the self-assessments carried out by facilities; if not, how will
he verify that the self-assessed data is accurate; if so, who is
validating the self-assessed data from each health facility?
CW830E
REPLY:
1) No, the original tender was not intended to cover all the National
Core Standards but focussed on a sub-set of the standards considered
most urgent.
(a) This was because this is an integrated audit covering a number
of areas supplementary to the Core Standards and there was a
need to prioritise;
(b) A Steering Committee that was established in the Department to
oversee this process took this decision;
(c) The decision was informed by the need to obtain basic
information for planning in a timely fashion (see also answer to
1 (a).)
2) The Health Systems Trust did â
a) carry out the assessments themselves; and
b) did not utilise self-assessment carried out by the facilities,
although facility staff were used in the teams collecting
information, they were supervised by HST coordinators and were
as far as possible used in facilities other than their own.
Validation is being carried out by the HST Consortium.
END.