Spectramed and Liberty Health Holdings conclude strategic
SPECTRAMED Medical Scheme (‘SPECTRAMED’) and Liberty Health Holdings (LIBERTY HEALTH’) are, after months of extensive negotiations, pleased to announce the conclusion of a Strategic Alliance, aimed primarily, at the establishment of a highly competitive Super Scheme, whilst simultaneously aligning the Intellectual Property (‘IP’) of SPECTRAMED with the Technology- and Process Solutions of LIBERTY HEALTH.
In the case of SPECTRAMED, this will result in the adoption of LIBERTY HEALTH’s technology- and process solutions, via LIBERTY HEALTH’s subsidiaries VMed and Neil Harvey & Associates (‘NHA’) as early as 01 January 2010, whilst in the case of LIBERTY HEALTH, the SPECTRAMED Internal Fund- and Joint risk Management Models are to be adopted, universally, over the next 6 - 12 months.
Says JC (Quincy) Beukes, Chief Executive & Principal Officer – SPECTRAMED:
“We are very excited about the value this strategic alliance will bring both for our members and for the industry as a whole, which together with a clear meeting of minds between our respective Boards / Executive provides for significant future opportunity …
We believe that a Scheme, strong in its role as a Funding Vehicle, together with a system / administration specialist strong also in its role as Service Provider, can bring new solutions to many of the industry challenges faced …
To this end, our action has been deliberate to position SPECTRAMED as a preferred Super Scheme vehicle of the future whilst affording other industry players an ‘inclusive’, rather than an ‘exclusive’ opportunity for parallel alignment …
That 110 registered schemes - serving the needs of only 7 million (est.) beneficiaries in South Africa, is simply not sustainable is now a universally accepted fact … the question to ask, very simply, is : who will ‘succeed & prosper’ and who ‘fail and disappear’ over the next 3 – 5 years …
Our vision, quite clearly, provides for a Super Scheme vehicle of no-less than 400,000 families or 1,000,000 beneficiaries over the next 3 – 5 years, thus enabling a top-3 funding position and vastly improved ‘provider negotiation’ and ‘innovation capacity’ …”
Says Dr. Peter Botha, Chief Executive Officer – LIBERTY HEALTH:
“We believe that this alliance fits perfectly into the Liberty Health Group vision both for Africa- and South Africa and are excited about leading, rather than following what is commonly referred to as the ‘Super Scheme movement’ …
That this alliance further provides for a highly innovative model of co-operation, genuinely enabling the continuous development of shared intellectual property and value, makes for an ‘easy’ business consideration worthy of long-term investment … “
SPECTRAMED and LIBERTY HEALTH are further pleased to advise that the physical implementation of the ‘Organizational Alignment Project’ has already been in process for a number of months – albeit behind closed doors under the terms of confidentiality concluded, and is anticipated to result in the seamless transfer of functional service from Medscheme to VMed / NHA.
To this end, all SPECTRAMED constituents (comprising members, employers, brokers and providers) are reminded that SPECTRAMED has for some time now - owned all contact destinations (Tel. / Fax. / Membership No. & E-mail addresses) and has itself, carried the ‘core communications back-bone’ (infrastructure) attaching to such service. The proposed operational move is, therefore, not considered a ‘normal administration move’ and to which, very few of the business risks normally associated to such a transfer, are to apply.
In addition to the promise of improved service – through technology solutions, the association with LIBERTY HEALTH guarantees SPECTRAMED the maintenance of its below industry average total non-healthcare delivery costs, which over the past 2 years, has reduced from R274 Mil (2007) to R177 Mil (2009 est.) per annum.
