The department of Health would spend R3.2 billion this year on refurbishing 54 government hospitals, the department's spokesman, Fidel Hadebe, said this week.
Hadebe said the department and provinces were working on determining the overall cost of refurbishing all the facilities.
Last week, Zweli Mkhize, the chairman of the ANC sub-committee on health and education, said the government could not afford to fix the dilapidated state-owned hospital buildings on its own and it would need billions in funding help from the privately owned health groups.
An audit completed in 1998 showed that it would cost R28 billion to upgrade all the government hospitals in the country.
"Provinces were asked to review the capital needs for all health facilities that need upgrades, renovation, rebuild and new installation," said Hadebe.
The hospital revitalisation programme started in 2002/03 and 13 hospitals have been refurbished thus far.
Hadebe said the discussion on public-private partnerships (PPPs) was continuing.
Life Healthcare has confirmed that it was talking about PPPs with the government but said these talks had been on an informal basis.
Adam Pyle, the marketing manager at Life Healthcare, said if the government wanted value out of PPPs it should allow the private hospital groups to provide clinical services.
In its PPP model for a bigger refurbishment programme, the government is at present only offering private health care groups the option to fund the projects and to provide services such as cleaning and catering.
Life Healthcare has a PPP at Humansdorp. It also owns Life Esidimeni, which is the oldest PPP in the country, where it operate 14 facilities under contract for the provincial government.
Nkaki Matlala, the chairman of the Hospital Association of SA (Hasa) and a clinical officer at Medi-Clinic Southern Africa, said the private companies were willing to help the government with management of hospitals, training of nurses and reducing the long queues in hospitals.
"This year we have already met with two MECs. As Hasa we are talking to the health MEC in Gauteng and in the Western Cape. As Medi-Clinic, we are talking to the health MEC there as well," he said.
"As the private sector, we have been saying for a few years now that we want to join hands in improving all of the health care in our country because we cannot continue it as a corporate social investment project because it is not sustainable," said Matlala.
The ANC's Mkhize said the refurbishment had to happen concurrently with the phasing in of the government's national health insurance scheme.