The Western Cape health department has set up a think-tank to find ways to use the private sector to improve care for state patients, with potential projects ranging from improving access to high-tech scans to providing chronic medicines at more convenient locations.
The initiative aims to make better use of the resources available in the province and will draw on the experience the department gained contracting with the private sector during the Covid-19 pandemic, said Western Cape MEC for health and wellness Mireille Wenger.
The Western Cape drew up detailed contracts with private hospitals to be used if public hospitals were to run out of beds.
“To meet both the immediate and long-term needs of our residents, we need the public and private sectors, alongside academic experts, to work together to find smarter, more efficient ways to deliver quality care,” said Wenger.
The think-tank includes representatives from private hospitals, laboratories, pharmacy groups, medical schemes, academic institutions and the provincial health department. Its work will run independently of the national department of health’s push for National Health Insurance (NHI), said Wenger.
“NHI as it is currently conceived — if it does proceed — will probably take a very long time. That is why we’re making this big push to make sure that more people can have access to good quality care [now],” she said.
NHI as it is currently conceived — if it does proceed — will probably take a very long time. That is why we’re making this big push to make sure that more people can have access to good quality care now.
— Mireille Wenger, Western Cape MEC for health and wellness
NHI is the ANC’s controversial plan for universal health coverage, and aims to ensure all eligible patients are provided with services that are free at the point of delivery. Its first piece of enabling legislation — the NHI Act — was signed into law by President Cyril Ramaphosa in May 2024, but has yet to be brought into effect.
The DA-led Western Cape is the only province that voted against the NHI Bill when it was before parliament’s national council of provinces. While it has not taken legal action against the NHI Act, it has opposed draft regulations for the governance structure of the NHI Fund, released for public comment by health minister Aaron Motsoaledi in March, saying the act poses a risk to the functioning of the provincial health system.
The think-tank is exploring a range of initiatives that could improve patient care including a project that would enable public sector patients to receive specialised medical equipment and diagnostic imaging at private facilities.
Many patients, especially those living in rural areas, have to travel far for CT or MRI scans. If patients were able to obtain scans closer to home, it would reduce unnecessary travel and reduce expenditure on planned patient transport, which currently runs to R117m a year.
Discussion is under way with private sector pharmacies to expand the Western Cape’s chronic medicine dispensing programme into corporate and independent pharmacies, said the department’s COO, Saadiq Kariem.
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