Posts tagged with 'medical scheme'

 

SAPS medical scheme – R15.7 million of POLMED’s funds ‘looted’ by board of trustees

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Millions of rand in alleged “unlawful looting” of the SAPS’s medical scheme POLMED have drawn the ire of scores of police officers, who have slammed the level of coverage received.

Claims are that POLMED, which covers 680,000 members and beneficiaries, has “unlawfully” awarded roughly R15.7 million to its BOT (board of trustees) over three years in alleged contravention of its own rules.

Allegations are also that former National Police Commissioner General, Riah Phiyega, was “illegally” elected on to the BOT in contravention of Rule 18.9.9, which states: “Any person removed from an office of trust on account of misconduct should not serve on it.”

According to rule 18.24, Polmed remuneration should be determined by the scheme’s AGM (annual general meeting) and not by the CMS (Council of Medical Schemes).

By Polmed’s own admission, the scheme hasn’t held an AGM since 2015, with questions being raised
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This very popular birth control shot is out of stock for the second year running. Read why

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Women who have been forced to go without their usual birth control shot are now facing the consequences of months-long shortages. For many women in Rustenburg’s Bojanala Platinum District, Kgaladi Mphahlele is the first person they see after an abortion.

And one of the things they speak about is how to avoid seeing each other again.

Mphahlele works for the international humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders’ (MSF) and manages their termination of pregnancy programme in North West. There, he counsels women who have had abortions about ways to prevent unwanted pregnancies in the future by using contraception.

But for most of last year, Mphahlele couldn’t give women much of anything to avoid falling pregnant again — there were no contraceptives in the five clinics he manages.

Under South African law, a person can terminate a pregnancy for whatever reason for up to 12 weeks. A woman can also request an abortion betwee
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What a disgrace in our Hospitals, woman discharged from hospital, home in an ambulance (graphic photo’s)

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Mrs Kerns had been vomiting uncontrollably for three days by the time she eventually made her way to seek medical assistance.

On December 5 at 16:00 *Mrs Gracie Kerns arrived with her daughter, *Mrs Susan Coombs at Witbank Provincial Hospital.

Mrs Kerns had been vomiting uncontrollably for three days by the time she eventually made her way to seek medical assistance.

An ambulance had to be called to transport Mrs Kerns to the hospital due to her frailty.

Nearly exactly 12 hours after Mrs Kerns had arrived at Witbank Provincial Hospital, at approximately 04:00, she was finally able to see a doctor.

“The ambulance that took her to hospital was in a terrible state,” Mrs Coombs, Mrs Kerns’s daughter, explained; “the doors didn’t close. They’d apparently been kicked off of their hinges by a previous patient. The stretcher was also problematic as it wasn’t very manoeuvrable and lead to us having to shuffle my mother around
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Hard times lies ahead for the ANC’s Department of Health:- angry nurses says, No jobs, no vote

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“No jobs, no vote,” shouted disgruntled nurses who marched to the provincial health department in Pietermaritzburg.

Hundreds of nurses carried placards and handed over a memorandum demanding that unemployed nurses be employed by the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Health. Nurses from the Health and Other Service Personnel Trade Union of South Africa (HOSPERSA) were part of the march.

The marchers said there were 15,000 unemployed nurses in KZN and 40,000 vacancies for nurses nationwide, according to a “study”.

But when GroundUp asked the provincial chairperson of HOSPERSA, Thamsanqa Zondi, the source of these figures, he said the figures were estimates and should not be used by the media. He said the union did not have a copy of the study.

Last year nurses marched three times demanding that the health department prioritise their demands.

United Nurses Forum president Bhekithemba Gumbi said nothing had changed. Quoting
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Grandson laments treatment at PE hospital – ‘Not one nurse to help him’

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Life St George’s Hospital in Port Elizabeth has launched an internal investigation after the grandson of one of its patients posted photos of his grandfather soaked in urine and blood with “not one nurse to help him”.

This was despite the hospital knowing the elderly man needed 24-hour care for which he was signed up for, Jason Gordon wrote in a Facebook post on Tuesday.

His grandfather was blind and suffered from dementia.

“This is not the first time I have visited him after work to find something wrong. The first time they had inserted his drip incorrectly. It took more than 3 days for the swelling to go down,” Gordon wrote.

“This is not the kind of care I would expect when you pay so much for medical aid; this kind of thing should not be acceptable in any state or private hospital. You would expect people in the medical profession to be compassionate and want to make sure their patients are comfortab
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A tech company, Proteus, just launched a ‘smart’ cancer pills that track you with tiny sensors stamped into your medications

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A US digital medicine company called Proteus makes ‘smart pills’ embedded with sensors that tell your doctor when you’ve taken your medication. The pills also track activity levels.

Backed by big name investors like Novartis, Proteus debuted the first medication made with the technology – a form of the depression and schizophrenia drug Abilify – in 2017.

Now, Proteus is expanding into cancer.

Still, the research on whether the pills actually help patients take their medications when they should remains somewhat unclear.

Would a notification from your doctor as soon as you forget to take your medication help keep you on track?

A digital medicine company called Proteus is betting the answer is yes.

The Silicon Valley-based company makes what have been called “smart pills”: essentially, versions of regular medications embedded with a tiny sensor that can be tracked by a patch worn on a
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Let’s have a look at why doctors and nurses are facing unemployment

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It’s the age of austerity and it’s bad news for doctors, nurses and patients alike — unless the state can do more with less.

Almost 200 posts for doctors and specialists remain unfilled at Gauteng’s four academic hospitals — and many of these posts are likely to remain empty, the health department says.

Gauteng hospitals can only fill half of its critical medical staff vacancies — positions that normally go to doctors, specialists and nurses, Gauteng health department deputy director general for clinical services Richard Lebethe says.

Hospitals were first informed about this via an April circular sent to hospitals.

The head of psychiatry at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital, Wendy Friedlander, says medical officers are feeling the strain of almost 80 vacant posts.

“Doctors [now] have a much greater doctor to patient ratio. If you have more patients, what you can give in terms of time, facilities and resources
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Discovery apparently is more focused on profit than on service delivery to patients – patients signing in at certain hospitals now have to pay an extra R5000

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Discovery’s medical scheme announced at a very late stage that patients signing in at certain hospitals would have to pay an extra R5000 or go to an approved clinic.

The arrangement will be implemented from February 1, 2019 and doctors are not happy with the announcement.

Experts point out that the medical scheme is apparently more focused on profit than on service delivery to patients.

Such new measures are found to be unacceptable by many members of the scheme, but it appears that objections to Discovery’s management and decision-makers have fallen on deaf ears.

Read the original article in Afrikaans on Die Vryburger
This report does not necessarily reflects the opinion of SA-news.

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