THE BUSINESS OF SAVING LIVES

When Izinso Dialysis Services co-founder Nompumelelo Magwa quit her 9-to-five, she didn’t know that the move would literally place her at the doorstep of her life purpose!

“I will never forget the smell of burn wounds. While still working for the National Renal Care as a Clinical Technician in Nephrology, I was once assigned to Milpark Hospital’s Burns Unit to help revive the kidneys of a young mom who, together with her two children, had suffered third degree burns from a car accident. Dialysis can take between four to eight hours, so I spent a lot of time in her ward witnessing all efforts to restore her life. At that very emotional moment, it suddenly dawned on me that my job surpassed definitions of a career. The life of any patient I encounter lies in my hands,” says Mpume Magwa, co-founder of Izinso Dialysis Services, a company she established with her husband Sithembele Magwa. David and Janice Meissner joined as business partners. “Izinso Dialysis Services offers various forms of renal replacement therapies to patients whose kidneys can no longer carry out their functions,” she explains.

Magwa speaks with the passion of someone who knew quite early on that they wanted to run a medical business that would restore lives, as well as tend to patients’ emotional needs. Yet, the 40-year-old shares how her lifelong goal was to become a medical doctor — a dream, she says, was hampered by not achieving the required academic points to make it into medical school. Fortunately, her detour — in the form of a B-Tech degree in Clinical Technology at the then Pretoria Technikon — saved the day. “When I couldn’t get into med school, the next best thing was for me to choose something that would at least see me working in a hospital,” she recalls. “I must admit though that because the course wasn’t popular, most of us wondered what would become of our careers once we had graduated. We honestly had no idea what doors this diploma would open.”

Post-graduation, Magwa secured a job with National Renal Care and spent 15 years with the organisation before deciding to break free. “My

husband has always been entrepreneurial and was the first to resign from National Renal Care. He kept nudging me to follow suit so we could start building our own empire but my need for stability wouldn’t let me take that leap of faith,” she explains. Following a month-long December break, Magwa remembers feeling lethargic and completely uninspired to return to work. Upon her return, she resigned then started mulling over the next step. Whatever the future held, she knew that she wanted to be in something that would provide excellent renal care to patients from previously disadvantaged backgrounds.

THE X-FACTOR

As Magwa ascended the career ladder at National Renal Care, she moved further and further away from working directly with patients. She was first promoted to unit manager, then deputy operations manager and later clinical manager. “One of my biggest frustrations was that I was tired of seeing patients being taken advantage of and being in a leadership position meant more administrative work and less one-on-ones with patients,” she explains. As a result, being invested in patients’ treatment plans and not treating them as numbers is at the very core of what Izinso Dialysis Services stands for.

“We refer to our patients as partners because this business doesn’t exist without them. In all my years in the industry, I’ve learned that renal patients don’t want to be treated as incapacitated. They want to be engaged and involved in the decisionmaking process,” she explains. To ensure that their staff understand and live out the company vision, Izinso Dialysis Services organises regular training sessions where this service offering is reiterated. In addition to taking the unit managers’ business cards, the patients are also urged to keep the owners’ cards so that they have direct access to the top leadership should they encounter any recurring problems at the clinics. “For me, Izinso Dialysis Services is a place where patients come to hang out and have uplifting conversations with our staff while getting their treatments done. I don’t want it to ever feel like a typical clinic setting!”

IN THE BEGINNING

In just six years, Izinso Dialysis Services now boasts eight clinics — including a mobile facility that mostly serves Mediclinic, Netcare and other private hospital groups. The clinics are based in Soshanguve, Mamelodi, Mafikeng, GaRankuwa, Protea Glen in Soweto, Glen Austin in Midrand and Swaziland. The backstory — one that is perhaps testament to faith moving mountains — is that Magwa had been sharing their vision of setting up a dialysis clinic with an old patient. The patient then volunteered to take them around Soshanguve in search of premises. “We came across a building that we thought was appropriate and made contact with the owner. Even after we’d told him that we were waiting for our funding to pay out so we could afford the startup costs, he was gracious enough to say that we should go ahead and furbish him with a floor plan of what we were trying to achieve and that we would discuss money later,” Magwa explains. With the premises out of the way, Magwa and her husband knocked on more doors to secure funding for the dialysis machinery required. “In the end, the project was funded miraculously!”

By May, the state-of-the-art Soshanguve clinic was fully set up but patients didn’t show up until a month later. “I still went towork and opened at 7.30 am and would close around 6 pm,” she shares. Then one afternoon, a car parked outside their premises and she assumed that this person — like many others before her — was just there to enquire. She asked that we give her a tour of the premises and at the end, instructed us to book her appointment for the coming Thursday. “Just like that, we were finally in business and our doors have been open since!” she enthuses. “I’ve learnt that as an entrepreneur, you should never tire of those strangers that walk in to enquire about your services. In fact, serve them as well as you would a paying client!”

FORGE AHEAD

Magwa concedes that being a medical clinician isn’t without its share of hardships, citing how patients will sometimes discuss their financial struggles with them, hoping to get free treatment. Much as her patients’ financial hassles tug at her heartstrings, as an entrepreneur, she has had to learn to prioritise the businesses’ operational costs.

Speaking to the many other lessons she’s had to learn along her entrepreneurial journey, Magwa adds: “It was only late last year where I started sleeping with my phone on silent.” Along with that, she’s strict about knocking off on time and not taking work home. “Our new focus is working smart so we can give our three children — whose emotional needs we’d been neglecting — much-needed attention.”