Day hospitals will cut medical costs – prof

MIDDLE-CLASS South Africans needing operations may soon have the option of going to day hospitals, which do not require overnight stays.

Day hospitals keep medical costs down, but there are only 40 in South Africa out of 280 hospitals.

Healthcare group Advanced Health today lists on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange’s AltX. The exchange allows small- to medium-sized compa- nies the opportunity to raise capital to expand their businesses.

The company is putting up R20-million and aims to raise R80-million so it can build about 10 day hospitals in the next five to seven years.

It owns a day hospital in Roodepoort, one in Emahleni and is building a third in Soweto. It also owns two day hospitals in Australia.

“Far too many healthy South Africans are admitted to hospital,” according to Wits professor and health economist Alex van den Heever.

“In South Africa our admission rate of patients into hospital is double the rate of the United States, but South African patients stay in hospital for half the time of America.”

Van den Heever also said patients were admitted to stay overnight when they were facing a day operation. This pushed up the bill unnecessarily.

A new hospital group expanding was “the right thing” as competition reduced costs for consumers, he said.

But he warned that competition would only happen if the group was not “gobbled up” by one of the three major hospital groups in a few years’ time.

Just over 40% (R37.5-billion) of all medical aid money was spent on private hospitals in 2012.

In a bid to stop unnecessary hospital admissions, Discovery Health has been paying surgeons 30% more per procedure if they admit patients to a day hospital.