THE Competition Commission’s health-care market inquiry pressed private hospitals on Thursday to publish information on the quality of the services they provide, amplifying an issue that is a consistent theme in its questions about consumers’ access to care.
The inquiry was established to investigate prices in the private healthcare sector and determine if there are barriers to competition and access to services.
Patients in many developed countries already have objective data on the quality of healthcare services, helping them decide which facilities to use, but there have been limited initiatives like this in SA. SA’s largest medical scheme administrator, Discovery Health, launched a ranking system for private hospitals last year, based on patient satisfaction surveys, but it has yet to publish data on clinical outcomes such as the rate of hospital-acquired infections.
It means patients have very little way of gauging whether the private hospitals they are admitted to offer care that is better or worse than others, or up to international standards.
By contrast, the UK’s National Health Service publishes details of consultants’ mortality rates and indicates whether they are within an acceptable range, and the Quality Care Commission rates hospitals.
Private hospital groups Life Healthcare and Mediclinic International, who both made submissions to the inquiry on Thursday, said they faced a number of challenges in standardising measures across the industry and identifying the information that would enable consumers to make informed decisions.
They conceded there was no regulatory or legal impediment to them doing so.
Life Healthcare’s executive for strategy, business analytics, and investor relations Adam Pyle told the inquiry one of the main obstacles to publishing hospital quality data was the fact that its rivals did not do so, and the group was wary of "publishing in a vacuum".
Mediclinic’s Southern Africa CEO Koert Pretorius agreed, saying it should be a legal requirement, overseen by a strong, independent authority.
"The sooner you put it in place, the sooner everyone will get their act together," he said.
Inquiry panel member Cees van Gent said the private hospital groups seemed to be caught in a "prisoner’s dilemma", each waiting for the another to make the first move. The "prisoner’s dilemma" is a game analysed in game theory that shows why two parties may not co-operate even if it appears to be in their best interest to do so.
"Something really needs to change in SA, and every player must make it a personal crusade to do that. You shouldn’t wait for public organisations or maybe even the other side of the market — medical schemes and administrators — to force it upon you," said Dr van Gent, suggesting the industry was capable of devising a system for publishing hospital quality faster than any yet-to-be-established authority.
Dr van Gent elicited a commitment from Mediclinic and Life Healthcare to pursue the issue more vigorously. He asked Mr Pretorius to report back before the year-long inquiry concludes.
Mr Pretorius told the inquiry Mediclinic had scored below the international average overall in a patient-satisfaction survey in 2014 to benchmark its performance internationally.
Discovery Health deputy CEO Ryan Noach said the company aimed to publish data on the clinical outcomes at private hospitals by the first half of 2017. Hospitals had been collaborating with Discovery well before it launched its patient-experience survey, he said.
Mediclinic Southern Africa CEO Koert Pretorius. Picture: MARTIN RHODES
THE Competition Commission’s health-care market inquiry pressed private hospitals on Thursday to publish information on the quality of the services they provide, amplifying an issue that is a consistent theme in its questions about consumers’ access to care.
The inquiry was established to investigate prices in the private healthcare sector and determine if there are barriers to competition and access to services.
Patients in many developed countries already have objective data on the quality of healthcare services, helping them decide which facilities to use, but there have been limited initiatives like this in SA. SA’s largest medical scheme administrator, Discovery Health, launched a ranking system for private hospitals last year, based on patient satisfaction surveys, but it has yet to publish data on clinical outcomes such as the rate of hospital-acquired infections.
It means patients have very little way of gauging whether the private hospitals they are admitted to offer care that is better or worse than others, or up to international standards.
By contrast, the UK’s National Health Service publishes details of consultants’ mortality rates and indicates whether they are within an acceptable range, and the Quality Care Commission rates hospitals.
Private hospital groups Life Healthcare and Mediclinic International, who both made submissions to the inquiry on Thursday, said they faced a number of challenges in standardising measures across the industry and identifying the information that would enable consumers to make informed decisions.
They conceded there was no regulatory or legal impediment to them doing so.
Life Healthcare’s executive for strategy, business analytics, and investor relations Adam Pyle told the inquiry one of the main obstacles to publishing hospital quality data was the fact that its rivals did not do so, and the group was wary of "publishing in a vacuum".
Mediclinic’s Southern Africa CEO Koert Pretorius agreed, saying it should be a legal requirement, overseen by a strong, independent authority.
"The sooner you put it in place, the sooner everyone will get their act together," he said.
Inquiry panel member Cees van Gent said the private hospital groups seemed to be caught in a "prisoner’s dilemma", each waiting for the another to make the first move. The "prisoner’s dilemma" is a game analysed in game theory that shows why two parties may not co-operate even if it appears to be in their best interest to do so.
"Something really needs to change in SA, and every player must make it a personal crusade to do that. You shouldn’t wait for public organisations or maybe even the other side of the market — medical schemes and administrators — to force it upon you," said Dr van Gent, suggesting the industry was capable of devising a system for publishing hospital quality faster than any yet-to-be-established authority.
Dr van Gent elicited a commitment from Mediclinic and Life Healthcare to pursue the issue more vigorously. He asked Mr Pretorius to report back before the year-long inquiry concludes.
Mr Pretorius told the inquiry Mediclinic had scored below the international average overall in a patient-satisfaction survey in 2014 to benchmark its performance internationally.
Discovery Health deputy CEO Ryan Noach said the company aimed to publish data on the clinical outcomes at private hospitals by the first half of 2017. Hospitals had been collaborating with Discovery well before it launched its patient-experience survey, he said.
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