Impact of a strained economy on healthcare and patient behaviour – EXPIRED

This presentation will look at the following:
Our content aims to educate medical professionals about the effects of our country’s recent downgrade to junk status and what it means for the healthcare sector. There are various knock on effects which will change the way many stakeholders in the industry behave. We will touch on the decisions hospital groups have to make, the considerations of medical schemes and likely behaviours to expect from patients.

Section 1 – Context setting
Explain what junk status is at a high level.
Link the relevance of junk status specific to healthcare & privately practising practitioners.
Explanation of Y-O-Y increase in medical professional’s consultation fees.
Explanation of South African inflation.
Give context to understand our CPI relative to other CPIs around the world.
Explanation of the average increase in taxpayer’s salaries.

Section 2 – what this means for the healthcare industry (Macro-level view)
A look at other countries who’ve been downgraded to junk status.
Future prediction of these pressures.
Reactions expected from financial sectors and the impact to medical practices.
Discussion of the pressure that medical schemes will feel and what effect this has.
Understanding how the hospital system comes under strain.

Section 3 – what this means for individual private practitioners (Micro-level view)
We will identify the main trends where patients will be impacted and how their behaviours will start to change.
For extra context we’ll explain how individual practices are affected – supported by observations of aggregated data on Healthbridge clients.

Section 4: conclusion
Discuss active steps practices can take to fight the tough times ahead.
Ideas for what medical professionals can do today.
Future view – based on a trend analysis