Surgery in the fast lane

More people will soon have the option of undergoing minor surgery at a hospital that will discharge them on the day they were admitted.

Day hospitals keep medical costs down, but only 40 of South Africa's 280 hospitals are designed for same-day treatment.

Healthcare group Advanced Health lists on the JSE stock exchange's AltX board today.

The AltX listing allows small to medium-sized companies to raise capital to expand.

The company is putting up R20-million and intends to raise an additional R80-million to build about 10 day hospitals in the next five to seven years.

Advanced Health owns day hospitals in Roodepoort, western Johannesburg, and in Witbank, Mpumalanga,and is building a third in Soweto.

It owns two day hospitals in Australia.

"Far too many healthy people are admitted to hospital," according to Wits health economist Alex van den Heever.

"In South Africa our hospital admission rate is double that of the US.

"But South African patients stay in hospital for half the time of Americans.

"This indicates that a lot of healthy patients are admitted to our hospitals.

"This is partly because there are few day-hospital alternatives."

Van den Heever said patients are usually admitted the night before their surgery is scheduled, which pushes up the bill unnecessarily.

Tonsillectomies, circumcisions, correction of joint dislocations and cataract operations are among the procedures that can be done without accommodating a patient overnight.

The expansion of a new hospital group was "the right thing" because it reduced costs for consumers, Van den Heever said.

But he said competition would develop only if the group were not "gobbled up" by one of the three big hospital groups in a few years' time.

Just over 40% of all medical aid scheme money, R37.5-billion, was spent on private hospitals in 2012.

This does not include doctors fees and medication purchases.

In an attempt to reduce unnecessary hospitalisations, insurer Discovery Health has been paying surgeons 30% more per procedure if they admit their patient to a day hospital.

Bonitas medical aid spokesman Bobby Ramasia said another way to reduce costs was to allow GPs to handle minor procedures instead of specialists.

Advanced Health did not respond to requests for comment.