The National Health Insurance Bill: A message from the Deputy CEO, Amil Devchand

The NHI Bill was released to the country on 8 August 2019, setting out the proposed structure of the National Health Insurance scheme.

As a principle, the Lenmed Group supports the implementation of universal healthcare cover for the people of South Africa, in a responsible and sustainable manner. The Bill has sparked a flurry of vociferous debate from all quarters and in the process, has created a high level of anxiety and uncertainty within the industry, most notably, within the healthcare practitioner and funder spaces. As the next step, the Bill will now go through parliamentary processes, which includes a number of public participation and consultation phases. We are confident that further detail will come to light during this period, including services to be covered, financing mechanics etc, which will allow for robust debate and engagement between healthcare industry bodies, professional associations, government and other key stakeholders, to ensure an equitable outcome for all parties concerned.

"We are encouraged by the Department of Health’s willingness to work with the private sector during this interim period – we will be pursuing these opportunities diligently, with a view of creating a strong, mutually beneficial working relationship, that will hold us in good stead going forward"
Amil Devchand, Deputy Chief Executive Officer

Customer Experience at Lenmed

EYERYS CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

Lenmed implemented its unique electronic customer experience management system in 2015. The system gives patients the opportunity to provide feedback to us throughout their journey, this in turn enables us to address issues in real time, prior to a patient being discharged, and secondly view trends through an extensive reporting structure.

Patients are sent communication and feedback is requested at the following points:

The post-discharge survey is based on the HCAHPS international standard survey used throughout the healthcare industry and measures the patient’s perception of:

Formal complaints are also captured, managed and tracked on the same system. Reports from the feedback received allow us to better understand the patient’s journey and pain points.

LEARNINGS AND SUCCESSES

Over the years we have learnt extensively from the voice of the patient, some of the most interesting areas are mentioned below. We also found that when initiatives aligned to these variables are implemented, impressive improvement took place in the overall experience of our patients.