Analysis of departmental contracts within the KwaZulu-Natal Health Department : a supply chain management perspective.

Abstract

Analysis of departmental contracts within the KwaZulu-Natal Health Department: A supply chain management perspective The South African healthcare system is riddled with constraints, preventing adequate healthcare and service delivery. Post apartheid, efforts have been made to fix the problems, however the public healthcare system is still plagued with massive service delivery failures. The government plans to implement a multibillion-rand, National Health Insurance (NHI), to improve affordability and accessibility to healthcare. President Ramaphosa signed the NHI Bill into law on May 15, 2024, despite various objections to this measure. Supply Chain Management in public healthcare has been identified as a critical component directly impacting service delivery. All procurements and contracting of goods and services within the public healthcare sector have to undergo the legislated supply chain process. This study aimed to gain an understanding of the problems affecting supply chain management and service delivery, from the key role players, identified as managers and supervisors, within the KZN Health Department. This study specifically examines the challenges of departmental contracts as perceived by supply chain managers, on the basis of data collected, by means of an online questionnaire, from a representative sample of 90 health managers. Both parametric and non-parametric statistical approaches were applied for data analyses, in particular Principal Component, Anova and multivariate regression, using SPSS. The results show that perceptions of managers regarding the challenges of Departmental contracts tend to vary amongst managers and supervisors, in terms of their work experience, race and directorate within Supply Chain Management that they work, and the institution that they are from. The perceptions on the implementation of NHI do not differ across categories of gender, age and education. However, race (p-value=0.001) has a significant effect on the implementation of NHI, with Africans tending to have a more positive perception than other ethnic groups. The regression results indicate that satisfaction with procurement is significantly and positively influenced by contracts performance. This study provides recommendations to manage the challenges of departmental contracts, improve service delivery and aid in the rollout of the NHI.