Hospital Restructuring and Laboratory Services

Hospital services account for a high portion of public health sector expenditure and their role within the health system continues to be crucial for the appropriate delivery of health care in South Africa. The need for restructuring is informed by the fact that hospital services were:

Disproportionately expensive
Inefficient
Severely maldistributed with large variations in quality, access to, expenditure on, and tiering of services.

The efficient utilisation of hospital services also depends on effective referral systems between various levels of care. The following table defines this referral system.