Medical schemes making chronic disease management gains: HQA report

South Africa’s medical schemes are making progress in managing chronic diseases, but major gaps remain in preventive healthcare.

The latest Health Quality Assessment ( HQA) report shows more than 80 percent of eligible members are missing key cancer screenings, while C-section rates for women giving birth remain high.

Insiders now say that healthcare providers and medical schemes must work together to improve screening and mental health follow-up care.

Chairperson of the HQA’s Clinical Advisory Board Professor Jacqui Miot says, “HQA measures data from around 85% of the medical scheme members, seven million lives, in South Africa.

We measure across a variety of different categories: prevention and screening, maternal and neonatal care, chronic disease management, and hospitalization.

And so, what we’re seeing in this report this year, we are definitely seeing steady improvement in things like chronic disease management.

There are other areas where we are seeing static, things aren’t really changing, but we’re not seeing massive drops in in in certain indicators either.”