Group focuses on increasing access and decreasing costs

HAVING started on the Cape Flats with the Melomed Gatesville Hospital during 1989, Melomed Hospital Holdings has always had a goal of improving access to healthcare in South Africa.

With cost being a critical factor in accessing healthcare in the country the Melomed Group has a strong focus on managing and containing costs in its hospitals.

We have a number of agreements with medical aids, whereby we are a designated service provider and we enter into very competitive fee tariffs with these funders in order to ensure it is sustainable and cost-effective.

“It is known in the industry that our tariffs are generally lower than other private hospital groups,” says Pedro. He says that the group’s mission is to provide affordable healthcare, so there is also a strong focus on managing healthcare costs downwards.

“Our hospital design and layout is important; by reducing the distances between services and making the hospital more efficient we reduce our fixed overheads, especially by combining stock rooms between wards and improving security.

“We also insource a number of services that other hospitals might outsource, which improves our control and reduce costs per patient, while still increasing the efficiency and quality of services to patients,” says Pedro.

The importance of Melomed’s emphasis on containing and cutting costs wherever possible is substantiated by the first Future Health Index (FHI) recently released by Philips, which reports that cost is a significant barrier to healthcare in South Africa.

The detailed international research study explored how countries around the world are positioned to meet long-term global health challenges through integration of health systems and adoption of connected care technologies. South Africa received an overall score of 56.7 out of a possible 100, highlighting the need for a concerted effort to increase access to healthcare; the cost of healthcare came out as one of the top barriers to coordinating healthcare further in South Africa.