The Hospital Group’s story began during South Africa’s troubled times of Apartheid, in 1984, when the first Lenmed Clinic opened its doors in Lenasia, offering people in the community quality clinical care at affordable prices.

Initially, the cost efficiency focus was directed at hospitals whilst treating professionals were also being focussed on by the Funders. The emphasis has gradually changed with the hospitals being made responsible for the full basket of care on their premises. This delegation of responsibility, whereby hospitals need to engage with service providers to ensure cost efficient care, was a strategically significant move. Allied with the channelling of members into network facilities, it ensures that the hospitals will invest money, resources and time into managing what is essentially the Funders domain so that the hospital will be included on the hospital networks. It all has a rather counter-intuitive feel to it in that we need to eliminate unnecessary expenditure which will, concomitantly, reduce turnover.

The end game is that this approach will result in hospitals being included on more networks which will drive volumes and ultimately increase revenue. It is a simple equation – squeezing the same number of patients into fewer facilities, that operate efficiently, will allow the Funders to accomplish more with the contributions available to them. The ultimate economic implication of this is cheaper medical aid, which means more members and busier providers. That is the simplistic theory. Reality is unfortunately never that simplistic.

What it means for us is that we need to engage with each other to ensure that we are delivering cost efficient services across the entire spectrum of products and services supplied to our patients.

It means being selective about using the product that is cheaper but does not compromise on quality. It means provider appropriate level of care and length of stay services for our patients. Patient care can never be compromised. We just need to ensure that we are providing the appropriate patient care as cost efficiently as possible.

You will be seeing more of us from Lenmed Head Office at your facilities when we introduce ourselves over the next two months. We look forward to engaging with you on this and other subjects and aligning our efforts to ensure that Lenmed facilities are the preferred choice for Funders when they select their networks.