Health care in South Africa

CONTENT PAGES:
1. Provide history, and map (location) of the geographical area this case study evolved from.

Africa is an African country based on the south-most end of the continent. The country was colonized by the British power and gained its independence in 1961. Before then, the country had suffered adverse effects of the apartheid, which gave a chance for disease prevalence to some diseases back then, both communicable and non-communicable diseases.
The apartheid policy demanded that the whites be separated from the natives in South Africa. There was, therefore, two healthcare systems, private and public. The public system mostly served the south Africans, whereas the private system served the whites (coovadia et al., 2009). For this reason, the health of the Africans in the country deteriorated, and disease burden was greatly increased in the country. It was not until the year 1962 that the apartheid policy was undone that the south Africans began enjoying equal rights as the whites.

The 1990s, the levels of epidemic diseases, some of which could be traced from the colonizers, like AIDS, had really gone up. Either, it also had really high rates of tuberculosis. In addition to that, the levels of other non-communicable diseases such as high blood pressure, cancer, and heart disease were on the rise.

Using the company history in the first half of this case…What is the:
1. Mission

the company, Discovery Limited, had a mission to establish a stronger health care system in South Africa and make a quality health care system affordable to the south African’s.

The vision of the group was to ensure that all people have access to quality health regardless of their class.

affordable premiums for the people and standardize them so that no one will be charged a lot more than others. This was so in order to encourage them to invest in saving for their health services.

What are the central problems or themes in this case at a patient level, population level, and national level?

From the patient level, the quality of services provided is quite unequal. It is based on the biased distribution of wealth and resources. It does not consider that the life of any citizen is worth guarding. Either every citizen should be entitled to the right to quality healthcare. Either, reports from the media also showed that the country’s medical institutions did not meet the primary standards of the patient expectations. No wonder, Koelble, and Siddle (2014:1118) talks about the healthcare system of the country as ruined and in serious need of repair.
The population of the country, either is another challenge facing the country. It is not much about its size, but about its dependency rate. A good part of the population is not able to meet the expenses. Either the population does not provide adequate human resources to cater to health services in general. Actually, even Africa generally has less than 1:1000 health worker to population ratio, which is almost more than ten times that of Europe (Fonn, Ray & Blaauw 2011:658).
The government has also contributed to the poor healthcare system. Despite the introduction of several programs to improve healthcare, there is still a big gap left hence causing the people to lose trust with the system. For instance, it should have worked to increase the ratio of health workers to the population.

Any health disparities, discriminatory, health inequality, …etc. Did you discover in this case?

Cases do exist in the health sector in South Africa. These disparities are mainly based on the social class of the patients so that the wealthy have access to better healthcare than the poor. Either lower economic classes of people were seen to be more vulnerable to diseases and disabilities.

What did you since is the organization’s culture when it comes to its people’s priorities, inhibitions (Can you provide examples where the managers and/or employees in the organization provided their feelings of what it’s like at the organization?)
Make a timeline of the events (product development) in the case study. The timeline can provide the clue for the next step in the organization’s journey.

Gore decided to start a business aimed at giving people ideas to save for their medical expenses. He raised $ 0.9 million from Rand Merchant Bank (RMB).
Gores products were given the name Discovery Health. RMB become their first corporate clients. RMB acquired momentum as a life insurer.
The business was the largest open medical scheme administrator in South Africa.
the company was listed on the JSE with an initial market capitalization of $500 million
it entered U.S. market
The company diversified in other products like life insurance received money for further business expansion from a secondary offering.
Established joint ventures with Tufts Health Plan and Guardian Life.
The company launched a discovery card in partnership with the first South African national bank.
Launching Discovery Invest in south Africa.
exited U.S. market after a loss of about $100 million
increased ownership share to 75%
Acquired the remaining 25% ownership in the joint venture from prudential.
Announce partnership with Italy-based Generali and John Hancock Insurance in the USA.
It entered the Japanese life insurance market.

The company has a strong crew of innovation. It is also proactive in venturing into new markets where opportunities arise. However, they have, at some point, recorded very big losses as they try to venture into other markets. In addition to that, their response to that was quitting. Instead, they should have either been careful before venturing into the market and try to recover the lost money, not quitting. Either, they should also try to venture into other countries across the continents to try and expand their market. This is so that they can capture a large market as possible since they are facing a lot of competition. The competition is mainly based on similar designs of products which they should diversify.

Now that you have answered the larger strategic objective of the firm. It includes using the company’s vision, mission, and key objectives.What are three key recommendations could you suggest taking this model to the U.S. and achieving these goals in another country?

The company should review the loss that resulted from the previous venture into the U.S. Basing on their findings, it should lay strategies to avoid such in the future.
They should also redesign their products to reduce their risks of loss.
A change of management crew is also recommendable as they venture to any new market.

If you were able to provide a detailed implementation framework, then where you begin (individual, community, population, national level) and why.

The Best level to begin is from the individuals. This is because they are the basic unit of all the other levels. They form the community and the nation at large. It may be cumbersome but the most effective. Either meeting clients at the individual level has a high chance of not leaving out many of them.