WHAT INDUSTRY PLAYERS SAY
Discovery Health “The HMI findings provide a number of positive recommendations to build South Africa’s healthcare system,” CEO Dr Jonathan Broomberg says.
Discovery supports the recommendation that the need for healthcare in certain areas must be carefully evaluated before licences for new hospitals and other healthcare facilities are issued, he adds.
The recommendation regarding the introduction of a standardised base benefit option across all schemes and that schemes can offer supplementary benefits “are progressive and workable proposals”, he says.
When it come to Discovery Health’s strong market position and sustained profitability, Broomberg says it’s not because the administrator charges its medical scheme clients higher fees than its competitors do, but rather it’s thanks to f business factors such as “continuous innovation and greater operational efficiency driven by management excellence. There are also large investments in advanced systems and customer-service technologies.” Publicly available data confirms that administration expenses and managedcare fees incurred by Discovery Health Medical Scheme are in line with the overall market, Broomberg says. The fees charged to Discovery Health are in fact the 10th lowest out of 22 open schemes.
Bonitas “The need for healthcare to be evaluated from an independent perspective with input from all major stakeholders has been a long time coming,” says the fund’s principal officer, Gerhard van Emmenis.
He adds the scheme supports the recommendation of simplification and believes regulation of hospital tariffs and service utilisation will make medical aids more affordable.
Netcare Limited The hospital group wants to “consider in detail” the HMI report before commenting, says Melanie Da Costa, the group’s director of strategy and health policy.
Netcare plans to make further submissions to the competition commission because “there are certain aspects of the provisional findings which appear flawed and unsupported by the evidence which has been made available to Netcare and its experts”.
The group declined to elaborate further until the report has been studied more comprehensively and believes “greater collaboration between the public and private health sectors can ensure adequate, reliable and affordable hospitalisation and care for all South Africans”, Da Costa adds.
Mediclinic SA The hospital company is also in the process of studying the findings and recommendations in the report, Mediclinic Southern Africa says in a statement sent to us.
It believes it’s of the utmost importance that the report “should be based upon accurate and reliable data, information and analysis”. The group says the private healthcare industry has a valuable role to play in broadening access to effective, high-quality healthcare in South Africa.