The responsibility of the South African government to urgently address the state of national health care places great pressure on its limited resource base, particularly against the background of its extensive portfolio of transformation priorities. These facts ensure that any approach taken in the past will be problematic and incomplete. Despite this, allegations are often made of supposed incompetence of various provincial hospitals to provide health care in line with South African Constitutional and Patients' Rights Charter imperatives. The article reviews the evident catastrophic state of the National Health Services (NHS) from the point of view of a transforming South African public service and the ostensible concomitant improvement of public service delivery. Forging a marriage of public administration and marketing insights, the article seeks to contribute towards the alleviation of the apparent national health care dilemm