Standard Operating Procedures for Preparedness, Detection & Response to a Coronavirus (2019-NCOV) Outbreak in South Africa

By Emerging Market Healthcare

Emerging Market Healthcare Ltd (EMC) is a provider & patient initiative within the base of 200 Black doctors from disadvantaged areas of the Western Cape in January 2003. The EMC is a genuine South African empowerment story of a home grown enterprise created within the network and patient base of the previously disadvantaged areas of the Western Cape in the face of high barriers to entry within an administrator and hospital dominated healthcare environment. The DFPA is the oldest IPA in the country, having been established in 1984. EMC was established in 2003 when the founding doctor group (DFPA) took the paradigm shift to create a healthcare contracting entity, driven by providers, to control their own healthcare information. We have become the large independent DSP nationwide, absent of corporate involvement and any vertical integration with any hospital group. We have a frugal activity based costing mentality, which together with our own proprietary IT infrastructure (managed care, patient based, protocols based) allows for price competitiveness, an integrated DSP development and genuine risk transfer to the general practitioner. The philosophy of empowering the 2 constants in the intangible and heterogeneous healthcare service chain, the patient and the doctor, has underpinned our business approach.