The Western Cape health department is now formally the Department of Health and Wellness, and its patient complaints route is unusually accessible: one of the options costs the complainant nothing at all.
Contact details
- Contact centre and patient complaints: 0860 142 142
- Patient complaints by mobile: send a Please Call Me to 079 769 1207
- Patient complaints email: [email protected]
- Fax: 021 483 4143
- Street address: 4 Dorp Street, Cape Town. Postal: PO Box 2060, Cape Town, 8000
The Please Call Me line is the point
A Please Call Me costs nothing and needs no airtime. For a patient without data or credit — which describes a great many people using public health services — that is the difference between complaining and not complaining. Send it to 079 769 1207 and the department calls you back. It is the most useful number on this page and almost nobody knows it exists.
Office of the Provincial Minister
- Telephone: 021 483 5417. Fax: 021 483 8661
- Email: [email protected]
- Assistant Director, Statutory Bodies: 021 483 5774
The department also publishes the individual work mailboxes of its Head of Department, his personal assistant and the ministerial spokesperson. Those are named people rather than desks, so they are not reproduced here. Write to healthmin@ for a ministerial matter and to service@ for a patient one.
Complain to the facility first
Every public hospital and clinic in the Western Cape has a complaints process and a designated person to receive one. Start there, in writing, and get a reference number on the day. The provincial route above is the escalation for a complaint the facility has not resolved, and the first thing the province will ask is what the facility said.
What to have ready
- The facility name, the date and the time.
- The patient’s folder or hospital number if you have it. This is what makes a complaint traceable.
- What actually happened, in order, and what outcome you are asking for.
- The name of anyone you already spoke to and the reference they gave you.
This is not the emergency number
For an ambulance in the Western Cape phone 10177, or 112 from a mobile. The 0860 line is an office-hours contact centre and will not dispatch anything. Do not use a complaints channel for an emergency.
If the province does not resolve it
- A complaint about the conduct of a doctor, nurse or other registered practitioner goes to the Health Professions Council of South Africa or the South African Nursing Council, independently of the department.
- Maladministration by a state department can be taken to the Public Protector.
- A refusal of emergency medical treatment is a constitutional matter and can also go to the South African Human Rights Commission.