How Unity Health Aims To Provide Primary Healthcare To South Africans. Unity Health is a well-established primary healthcare provider in the South African market. The company’s mission is to offer primary healthcare insurance solutions to the majority of South Africans who are unable to afford medical scheme coverage. Unity Health is a division of Ambledown Financial Services, a company that largely providers gap cover insurance to over 300 000 policyholders in South Africa or about 60% of the market. It prides itself with exemplary product innovation and customer service. Unity Health offers a variety of plan options to suit the client and the clients’ family’s needs. The company has Hospital Plans which include benefits such as emergency evacuation, accidental death, in-patient hospital stabilisation & treatment and more. It also has Primary healthcare plans including benefits such as GP visits & procedures, chronic and acute medication, basic & emergency dentistry, optometry and pre-birth maternity benefits. Wellness plan benefits include onsite wellness days, health screenings, vaccination program and more.
The company’s commitment is to the millions of South Africans to ensure they have access to quality healthcare at an affordable price. Its product focuses on the essential healthcare needs of most South Africans and includes a range of primary healthcare and hospitalisation benefits. Approximately 85% of South Africans do not enjoy private healthcare as they simply cannot afford medical scheme coverage. Its products are designed to ensure they are affordable to the majority of South Africans. Primary healthcare is the most essential medical need to most South Africans. In the General Household Survey of 2017, more than 85% of households required primary healthcare as their first consultation after becoming ill or injured.
Designing and pricing a simple set of primary healthcare benefits is an uncomplicated task as delivering a real service is far more demanding. In order to make their product as affordable as possible the company has established networks of general practitioners, dentists, pharmacies, pathologists, radiologists and optometrists. A managing and expanding provider network is an ongoing and onerous effort and as such it has dedicated significant resources. Its current providers consist of approximately over 3000 Network General Practitioners, over 2700 Open Dentist Network and over 2700 Network Optometrists.
To maximise its administration efficiency it has teamed up with MIP to provide it with state of the art medical administration systems. MIP is well known in the medical scheme environment and provides system solutions and support to numerous medical schemes. The company receives claims daily from various providers via switching companies and thereafter claims are assessed and processed for weekly claim payments.
