SAOCs accreditation as a managed healthcare organisation has recently been renewed for another two years, ending December 2010.
This again focuses the attention on the role SAOC has played in the past years and is still playing in the industry.
Also, with the emergence of other role players in this sector, it has become important to understand SAOCs core business.
SAOC was established to ensure the longevity of the discipline of oncology in South Africa. Escalating costs of drug treatment and radiation threatened the disciplines existence in the private sector. Further complicated by failing services in the public sector, left little option for the profession to find solutions – and they did.
Establishing a product, together with the professional societies, which not only set a standard for anti-neoplastic treatment but also regulated the application of this product, ensured that oncology was given another lease of life in the private healthcare sector.
Participative policies ensured that all oncologists had and still have the opportunity to be part of this unique product, either by way of clinical input or as members of review panels.
Accreditation of facilities was the next logical step. Initiated by the professional societies, this project fitted the SAOC business objective hand-in-glove. As administrator of this project, SAOC also ensure that optimal treatment remains available in appropriate facilities.
Clients such as medical schemes, medical scheme administrators and managed healthcare organisations soon picked up on the benefit the product promised for this industry and patients in general and to date the vast majority of these organisations are contracted to SAOC.
The unlikely clients, i.e. the oncology providers, followed and after an initial period of hesitancy, also evident in the funding industry initially, the overall benefit of the product and the organisation became entrenched.
Finally, SAOC cannot be the judge and the jury. It is not an oncology service provider. It is a managed healthcare organisation with a focus on clinical guidelines and clinical or case review.
It remains willing to work with service providers at any level, be that in groupings of any design and number, in private and public practice, to the benefit of oncology in general in South Africa. SAOC believe that such relationships should be complimentary and not divisive.
The benefits of these relationships, based on sound business and clinical principles, are beyond challenge.
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