Medical schemes regulator boosts patients’ rights to choose their pharmacy BL PREMIUM 27 April 2021 - 20:08 Tamar Kahn
The medical schemes regulator has banned the imposition of excessive co-payments on patients who choose health-care providers outside the networks chosen by their medical schemes.
While the move potentially has implications across the private health-care sector, it will bring particular relief to independent pharmacies shut out of these networks and give patients greater choice in where they purchase their medicines.
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Board of Healthcare Funders to work with panel probing discrimination 20 January 2021 - 10:17 Image: 123RF/SAMSONOVS
The Board of Healthcare Funders (BHF) says its members have no agenda to intentionally discriminate against any medical professional.
The board said it has a zero-tolerance for any form of discrimination.
It was responding to the release on Tuesday of an interim report by a panel convened by the Council for Medical Schemes (CMS) to investigate allegations made by a number of healthcare professionals that they were being treated unfairly by medical aid schemes based on race and ethnicity.
The report found that between 2012 and 2019, black practitioners were more likely to be found to have committed fraud, waste and abuse than their white counterparts by Discovery, Medscheme and the Government Employees Medical Scheme (Gems).
Medical schemes to pay for members vaccines Lindile Sifile > By Lindile Sifile - 18 January 2021 - 07:21
All 9.5m South Africans who belong to medical aid schemes will not have to pay a cent for Covid-19 vaccines.
All medical aid schemes, regardless of their membership size, are expected to cover their clients at 100% when the Covid-19 vaccine rollout finally gets under way in coming weeks. The Board of Healthcare Funders (BHF) has confirmed that no medical aid member will be expected to pay for the vaccine. Only 16% of the country’s population belong to medical aid schemes.
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The Government Employees Medical Scheme (Gems) and the Board of Healthcare Funders have urgently gone to court on Sunday to interdict the public release of an interim report about racial discrimination against doctors by medical schemes.