The impact of batho pele in the Department of Health at the Mafikeng Provincial Hospital

Abstract

South Africa, like many other developing countries has a great challenge of maximising customer satisfaction, and of minimising customer complaints that emanate from poor service. All sectors, be they public or private, exist so as to fulfil particular needs of their internal and external constituencies. The interests of these constituencies should inform the decisions taken in those organisations. Customers form part of these constituencies, and account for a larger proportion of the revenue base. It becomes therefore imperative that organisations should devise all means to know the needs of their customers, as meeting them is the only way of retaining them and thus retaining their income. The public service has even a greater challenge of providing basic services to an infinite client base, the community. Unfortunately, public services have to be provided within the constraints of scarce resources and skills. To even further compound the problem, the private sector provides similar services, and competes with the public sector, posing a threat of depleting the customer base of the public sector.

The public sector therefore has to continuously seek means of keeping the customers satisfied with its services by improving its manner of service delivery. It is this drive that has led to various transformation initiatives that envisage improving service delivery. The Department of Health provides health services to the public, and cannot afford to run a sloppy service that does not satisfy its customers due to the nature of the services it provides. With the HIV / AIDS scourge facing the country, the department is expected to outperform the rate of HIV infection by renderering a self-less service that satisfies community members. There is a wide range of imperatives that could be adopted by the Department of Health through its institutions to provide better, faster and accurate services. Benchmarking from other health institutions as well as other countries could be one way of improving health services, and building the internal capacity and appropriating adequate resources is another way. Whichever method is adopted to improve these services should however, be communicated to the community at all phases to ensure that confusion and fear of rapid changes is minimised.