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BusinessLive reports that according to the Board of Healthcare Funders (BHF), the government should consider regulating where private sector doctors and specialists work, in order to distribute their services more evenly across the country.
"The disproportionate distribution of health-care professionals is a concern. Better planning and regulations are required to enforce efficient allocation of human resources … It is therefore imperative that the certificate of need be revisited," said the BHF, a key player for medical schemes, in a report released on Friday. The controversial suggestion is unlikely to sit well with doctors, who previously persuaded the Constitutional Court (ConCourt) to set aside regulations requiring them to obtain a certificate of need, or ministerial approval, prior to practising. While the National Health Act contains provisions enabling the minister to regulate this arena, he has not done so since the ConCourt case. But the issue is very much still alive, as the Competition Commission’s health market inquiry recently recommended in its draft report that the health department develop a new framework for licensing all health-care facilities, based on a national plan that considers public and private sector capacity and the needs of the population to be served. While its emphasis is on private hospitals, licensing could be extended beyond acute facilities over time. The BHF’s Charlton Munrove said other approaches to licensing could be the creation of incentives to get healthcare professionals where they are needed.
- Read this report by Tamar Kahn in full at BusinessLive
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