The Sunday Mail
Linda Mzapi
When Thabo Tshuma, a Chivi resident, travelled to Harare for treatment, to say that he was relieved would be an understatement, he was optimistic that was the end of his ailments.
For years he had been having terrible back pains.
Little did he know that the journey to Harare would bring no joy.
As he waited for his turn to see the doctor, Tshuma wondered why it was taking so little time for the doctor to attend to the patients.
Efficiency at its best, he mused.
However, it didn’t take him long to find out that the doctor was simply referring the patients to various specialist doctors.
The one he was referred to, of course, was demanding an arm and a leg, just for consultation.
The young man at the specialist’s front office was very frank, “You pay first before seeing the doctor,” he said.
And so Tshuma went back to Chivi to toil for the money required.
When he finally gathered enough to pay the specialist two months later, another shock was in the waiting.
The referring doctor was the owner of the surgery he had been referred to!
Tshuma is not the only person who has found himself in such a predicament.
However, this practise is a breach of the patients’ rights that are enshrined in the Patient’s Charter of Zimbabwe.
Part of the Patient’s Charter reads: “Patients must exercise their right to choose health workers who provide them with treatment or advice, the place and type of treatment which is provided. After being informed of the possible options, patients have the right to refuse or halt any medical intervention.”
But despite such provisions, some medical practitioners continue to drive patients to their own surgeries, thereby leaving them with little choice as to where they receive treatment.
Experts define the health referral system as a process in which a health worker at one level of the health system, having insufficient resources (drugs, equipment, skills), seeks the assistance of a better or differently resourced facility at the same or higher level to assist in, or take over the management of the client’s case to manage a clinical condition”.
However, this provision is being abused as some medical practitioners are referring patients to other facilities even when there is no need for that.
The Health Professions Authority of Zimbabwe (HPA) has raised a red flag over the health referral system.
The Patient Charter is being violated left right and centre.
HPA’s secretary-general, Mr Shepherd Hurume, said his organisation is engaging the Ministry of Health and Child Care over the issue.
“Members of the public are being short-changed. If you read the Patient’s Charter, it clearly states that the patient has the freedom of choice,” he said.
Mr Hurume said some medical aid societies are now referring patients to their own pharmacies while some pharmacists are going to the extent of changing prescriptions to suit their stocks.
“You get a prescription from a doctor and when you get to a pharmacy, they change that prescription,” he fumed.
Medical aid societies are also deviating from their core business of being funders into service providers.
The deputy minister of Health and Child Care, Dr Aldrin Musiiwa said this is creating a lot of problems within the sector.
“It is an obligation for a medical aid funder to timeously pay a service provider so that we safeguard the industry and the interests of the patient, whose money they would have collected,” said Dr Musiiwa.
The Health and Child Care secretary, Dr Gerald Gwinji, said medical aid societies are allowed to be service providers but should be properly regulated.
“The existing statutes do not categorically prohibit medical aid societies from investing in service provision.
This space was generally protected by moral ethical persuasion rather legal provisions,” he said.
Dr Gwinji said the entire health referral system is a grey area that needs more clarify .
