Day hospitals a boon for consumers

ONE WAY of tackling the high cost of health care is the growing collaboration between medical schemes and day hospitals, which is good news for consumers, says Bibi Ross-Goss, the group operational manager at Advanced Health.

“By avoiding unnecessary overnight stays, procedures at a day hospital are invariably less expensive than equivalents at one of the traditional, full-service hospitals. For example, in 2014, a patient would have paid about R11 000 through a medical scheme for a tonsillectomy in a traditional hospital, as opposed to about R8 000 at a day hospital,” Ross-Goss says.