Time for turning over a new leaf

Dear customer

The challenges facing our healthcare market are well documented and widely reported.  One can hardly open a newspaper to find another report on failing public hospitals, regulatory conflicts between the national department and private sector, the migration of healthcare professionals, and so on, and so on.  I hope that the new health minister, Barbara Hogan, will put a swift end to this.  She seems determined to start with a critical element of a system – the motivation of healthcare workers.  She most certainly deserves all the wishes of good luck she can get, because in this instance, as always in any organisation, the most complex challenges are those involving people.

But our new minister should also, as a high priority, look toward the private sector for its cooperation and help to rescue what many believe to be a healthcare system teetering on the edge of total collapse.  The confrontational relationship between private sector and the national department has done more harm than good, to be sure.  The closure of many community pharmacies, following tariff regulation, has achieved anything but to make healthcare more accessible and affordable.  The threats of professionals who will leave the country if tariff increases do not meet their expectations, are deeply worrying.  In a country that has such an inspiring track record of peaceful change, the national department’s approach has been regrettable at best and shameful at worst.  Surely, it is better to ask for cooperation rather than to order compliance?

We have all invested many years and lots of capital in an industry that has such a wonderful purpose, namely to promote wellness, prevent disease and heal illness.  We have more than just a vested interest – for the healthcare professional, this is a matter of a life’s choice and a moral obligation to your neighbour, and for us it is about a very long history supporting you in those efforts.  Our business, and many of our customers, go back to the nineteen eighties, when the first computer billing systems were introduced.  Your commitment to this industry, and our years in it, cannot be simply discounted.

For us therefore, we have found a new inspiration in the recent political developments in our country.  I think all is NOT lost, and I think there is sufficient political will to make it work.

Kind regards

Hennie du Plessis
CEO