Frost and Sullivan has examined the effects of NHI
They believe that there is a uncertainty in the SA healthcare industry.
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While the ANC government's plans to propose universal health cover for all
the country's citizens looks good on paper, the truth is that without proper
planning, transparency and partnership with existing health care platforms, the
plan is doomed to fail.
Healthcare analysts, Frost and Sullivan examined the government's new plans
and believe that the impact of the NHI on South Africa's medical industry
could be enormous.
"The mention of the NHI has led to uncertainty in the industry," noted
analyst, Lizelle Wentzel. "A lack of transparency as to how the system will work
has caused speculation and assumptions being made by various role players in
order to forecast the impact of the changes on their businesses."
Nobody will be left unaffected by the expected changes in the healthcare
industry, ranging from insurance groups to medical schemes, hospital groups and
others.
However, even the finest analysts cannot make correct predictions without
some type of clarification about how the structure of the planned National
Health Insurance will be.
"Frost and Sullivan believes that the private hospital groups will be
co-opted into the NHI in one way or another, which implies that they will see
more patients through their doors," said Wentzel. "However, we also expect the
NHI to add further pressure on prices, so margins will be squeezed."
The hardest hit, believe the analysts, will be medical aid schemes who are
already impacted by rationalization.
Overall, the group believes that the longer the government holds out on
concrete information for South Africans to understand how the new system works,
the more pressure the current healthcare services will be under, causing them to
seek revenues in international markets - which in turn will have a detrimental
affect on the South African market.
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