{"id":29596,"date":"2026-03-23T08:00:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T06:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&#038;p=29596"},"modified":"2026-03-23T08:00:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T06:00:07","slug":"sa-government-moves-to-recover-270-5m-in-unpaid-patient-fees-foreign-nations-among-targets","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/sa-government-moves-to-recover-270-5m-in-unpaid-patient-fees-foreign-nations-among-targets\/","title":{"rendered":"SA government moves to recover $270.5m\u00a0in unpaid patient fees, foreign nations among targets\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>The department has appointed debt collectors and is targeting traceable debt categories. The Gauteng Health Department\u2019s Siyabonga Jikwana says five debt collectors have been appointed to begin the process.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>&#8220;The debt collectors have been appointed by national treasury. Our job is to ensure that we can try by all means to recover as much as we could. We started with them five\u00a0months back and what we&#8217;ve seen during this period, they have managed to collect more than\u00a0$1.186 million\u00a0thus far, which is a great deal of improvement in terms of revenue collection from us,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>&#8211;SABC&#8211;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":29597,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[],"class_list":["post-29596","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"South Africa's (SA) Gauteng province Health Department says it is taking steps to recover $270.5 million in outstanding patient fees. It says a significant portion of over\u00a0 $141 million, is owed by self-paying patients, including foreign nationals","published_date":"2026-03-23 00:00:00","news_description":"South Africa's (SA) Gauteng province Health Department says it is taking steps to recover $270.5 million in outstanding patient fees. It says a significant portion of over\u00a0 $141 million, is owed by self-paying patients, including foreign nationals","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/29596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/29596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29598,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/29596\/revisions\/29598"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=29596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}