By all accounts, Medi-Clinic's rise from failing to make it into the list of SA's Top 200 listed companies in 2006 to a respectable number 33 in this year's Top Empowerment Companies (TEC) survey is nothing short of amazing.
When the group ventured into Switzerland, in a R17bn purchase last year, it didn't forget its black partners in SA.
Instead, it distinguished itself by involving BEE investors in the Swiss deal. Many other enterprises tend to limit their BEE activity to local operations.
Medi-Clinic's exercise bolstered its black economic interest to 26,5%, notes clinical relations director Nkaki Matlala. This and other achievements have catapulted it to the top of the health care sector rankings in the TEC. It's worth noting that this is the same player that has for some time battled to shrug off its status as the sector's least empowered.
This year, the group, in the absence of a health care charter, produced a total BEE score of 60,3%.
It made significant strides on the employment equity and socioeconomic development fronts. And with a dedicated transformation manager, Mvula Yoyo, now on board, things can only get better.
Yoyo fingers the lack of skills (to transform management) and capital (ownership) as the main factors stymieing the transformational agenda.
"It will take years for the rank and file to benefit from BEE. Skills development could help fast-track our initiatives, but we're having other problems to deal with first, like the appalling dropout rate at tertiary institutions. We need to work together as business, government and academia."
Aspen is runner-up in the sectorial rankings with a total score of 59,55% and a close third is Netcare, which this year boasts 58,2%. It earns bragging rights for rising 27 spots to occupy the 37th place in the overall 2008 TEC rankings.
Aspen's decline on pillars like skills development should raise the alarm bells. It must be embarrassing, not least to new chairman Judy Dlamini - an advocate of skills development. On the other hand, the fall serves to remind the generics maker that its commitment to skills development and socioeconomic development should be supported by groundwork.
Netcare stands out for advancing on the skills development side of things. For its strides here, SA's premier hospital group made it into the Top 10 of the skills development rankings - ahead of old hands at BEE.
Given a chronic dearth of skills in the industry, Netcare's sustainable investment here should be emulated. In addition to huge nurse salary increments (possibly in response to the state's similar tactic last year), Netcare is training about 3 000 nurses this year - significantly higher than Medi-Clinic's 1 300, which will be reduced next year.
Government, which should be blamed for closing nursing colleges a few years ago, as the Stellenbosch-headquartered firm correctly argues, isn't as robust in remedying the situation.
Apart from ownership, an obvious aspect of the transformational agenda, three other areas need urgent attention: broadening access in townships and rural areas; directorate and senior management.
As with Medi-Clinic and the majority of JSE-listed players, that black people get to occupy nonexecutive posts and that senior management is still predominantly white is perhaps a reminder of just how black people are still on the sidelines of decision-making in corporate SA.
In terms of broadening access to previously disadvantaged areas, private hospital operators have failed dismally to extend services beyond the predominantly white areas. For instance, the densely populated Cape Flats, Medi-Clinic's backyard, has yet to get its first private hospital.
Of the group's 15 hospitals in the Western Cape, none is in a township. Likewise, Life Healthcare and Netcare are scarce in black areas. It's confounding: with black partners on board the expectation is to have this item high on the agenda. Now without a charter (that's been in the "planning" stages for four years), big players aren't going to jack up any time soon.
Private hospitals deny assertions their prices are inflated (a scenario that keeps the majority of black households out of the private-care fold). However - judging by the current health services pricing debate dominating the health minister's diary - their argument doesn't hold. Why else can the civil servants' Gems medical aid not afford to give its members access to private hospitals?
As for the medically insured township dwellers, the outcry for private facilities continues.
Making prices affordable and bringing services to the people doesn't require a charter. On the upside, it's imperative to sustain the sector.
