News

SA’s healthcare system at a crossroads

16 Oct 2025

Both public and private healthcare funding in the nation is heading towards a sustainability crisis. This was the consensus among delegates to the recent Hospital Association of South Africa (HASA) conference. – Spotlight (15 October 2025)
Because most of the recommendations by the 2019 Health Market Inquiry wasignored by Government, medical schemes have been hiking up premiums well above inflation, said experts.
Dr Dumisani Bomela, CEO of HASA, lamented the "fruitless debate" over NHI, suggesting that stagnation has been prioritised over genuine progress.
Dr Biancha Mentoor, a health policy manager at Netcare, likened the current strategic discussions to "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic".
However, there are few good-news stories:
They include Western Cape’s project to standardise payments and control costs as well as a partnership between Life Healthcare’s Eugene Marais Hospital and the Gauteng Health to treat oncology patients. According to Wharton-Hood CEO of Life Healthcare scaling up such partnerships for oncology, renal dialysis, or orthopaedics would be a win-win, easing public sector backlogs.

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