The Batho Pele Principles in the health services

Abstract

The White Paper on Transforming Public Service Delivery (Batho Pele White Paper, number 1459 of 1997)¹ provided a policy framework and implementation strategy for the transformation of public service delivery, which included the delivery of health services. Numerous newspaper articles reporting in detail about the complaints of patients with regard to health services prove that the Batho Pele Principles (BPPs) have not yet been implemented effectively. The researchers found that the success of the implementation, or lack thereof, has not been studied during the ten years since the introduction of BPPs in the health services. The Batho Pele White Paper¹ and the Patients’ Rights Charter² (PRC) served as basis for the literature review, the development of the research instrument and the presentation of ndings. The research process that was followed is briefly described under Method. The article focuses on the findings of the study, conducted in a public hospital in Gauteng.