Top of mind The business of mental health
Hospital groups gear up to meet growing demand for treatment
● SA’s hospital groups are gearing up to capitalise on the country’s growing mental health problems while the government grapples with providing adequate care for mentally ill patients.
This month health minister Aaron Motsoaledi bemoaned the state of mental health care in the country when he addressed a Hospital Association of SA conference.
“We are faced with the problem of exploding mental health care now; everybody knows that,” said Motsoaledi.
He questioned the effectiveness of SA having 575 psychiatrists out of more than 700 serving a small portion of the population in private health care, while the rest work in the public sector, including universities.
“Is it not wise that all must be made available to the rest of the population? I thought it was common sense and I thought that was exactly what we are itching for when we talk about universal health coverage,” he said.
According to the South African Depression and Anxiety Group, one in three South Africans suffers from mental illness or will suffer from it at some point in their life.
The government has been grappling with how to effectively provide mental health care, a problem that culminated in the Life Esidimeni tragedy in which more than 144 patients in Gauteng died after they were moved from Life Esidimeni mental health facilities to NGO-owned facilities in the province.
The provincial government has paid R159m in compensation to the families of the patients who died.
It was alleged that the province moved the patients in a bid to save money.
The tragedy shone light on the shortcomings of SA’s approach to mental health care as well as the dearth of adequate facilities and skilled mental health-care providers.
A report by the Lancet Commission on global mental health and sustainable development, published last week, highlights how thousands of people with mental disorders around the world face abuse and ill-treatment.
It notes that some patients die or are imprisoned due to the poorly planned transfer of mentally ill patients.
The commission estimates that the global economy will lose $16-trillion (R230-trillion) between 2010 and 2030, partly due to early-age onset of mental disorders and productivity loss as a result of not prioritising funding for mental health care.
Hospital groups Life Healthcare and Netcare’s expansion of their mental health-care services means SA could be better equipped to provide mental health care in the future.
Through its Life Esidimeni facilities, Life Healthcare offers chronic mental health-care services to state patients.
The hospital group’s strategy is focused on partnerships with the government and has been providing health-care services to the public sector for more than 50 years.
Life Esidimeni has 10 facilities and 2,942 registered beds in the Eastern Cape, Gauteng, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and the Western Cape.
Adam Pyle, CEO of Life Healthcare SA, said: “Our vision is to be a market-leading, international, diversified health-care provider. Consequently, mental health forms an important part of our strategy, aligned to the significant increase in the prevalence of mental health conditions and, more broadly, to the UN’s inclusion of mental health as part of the global sustainable development agenda.”
Pyle said mental health is part of Life Healthcare’s complementary services and in addition to the organic expansion at its existing facilities, the group had opened new mental health-care facilities in Cape Town and Gauteng and would open one in Gauteng in the first quarter of 2019, under Life Mental Health.
Life Mental Health has nine private psychiatric facilities and more than 500 beds in Gauteng, the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape.
Life Healthcare is not the only big hospital group that has prioritised mental health in its business strategy.
Earlier this year the Competition Commission approved Netcare’s acquisition of mental health-care facility group Akeso Clinics for R1.3bn. Akeso has facilities in the Western Cape, Gauteng, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal.
At the time of the announcement, Netcare CEO Dr Richard Friedland said that as a result of the surge in demand for mental health-care services in the country, Netcare was continuously exploring ways to improve its mental health-care service offering.
Netcare did not respond to requests for comment this week as it is in a closed period ahead of releasing its financial results.
The South African Federation for Mental Health (SAFMH) said that though the prioritisation of mental health by the private sector was a positive, it would never be enough if private health care was not affordable.
“It is not expansion of institutions we want to see” as this was already part of the private health-care model, said Nicole Breen, information and awareness manager at SAFMH.
“What we want to see is the adequate provision of support to people in their communities. We need more outpatient facilities, more daycare centres, especially for people with serious mental illnesses.”
Mental health forms an important part of our strategy, aligned to the significant increase in mental health conditions Adam Pyle
Life Healthcare’s SA CEO