A few good business reasons to enter the primary healthcare space

You may be on the threshold of entering the Primary Healthcare business (PHC) – or still at the stage where you are just looking for a future business that offers good prospects. At the outset, it should be said that, as promising as the prospects are within this business, it is a huge industry with many sectors and some serious challenges, so one really should have some sort of passion for healthcare from a social responsibility and compassionate point of view. As you strive to attain wealth you will be faced with legal, ethical and moral issues, so your mindset should be up to this.

Outside of the hospitals there are opportunities for basic care like curative, preventative and rehabilitation …with an eye to reducing costs and complications by preventing and treating disease earlier sooner than later. Private facilities can alleviate some pressure on the highly pressurised public services and hopefully can improve healthcare from a socio-economic point of view. So let’s look at a few good business reasons to enter the primary healthcare space.

It’s a global trend – Based on worldwide evidence that those in private practice can deliver more cost effective and better healthcare, many medical practitioners are shifting from hospitals to the PHC space. Entrepreneurial healthcare practitioners are being assisted by funding, policy and legislation changes, new innovations and partnerships.

There is growth potential – Africa in particular has a rapidly growing middle class who are in a better position to support private practice and move away from government healthcare institutions. About 4 million of the some 40 million uninsured people in South Africa are employed and support PHC services. As we are on the threshold of the NHI, the customer-base will comprise all uninsured individuals, irrespective of their affordability, so opportunities to become accredited private providers of PHC packages will arise.

Social impact – The importance of the social impact of PHC can never be ignored. Socio- economic development needs improvements in health and investment opportunities for those who seek to enter this area from a business point of view. Medical practitioners with an entrepreneurial spirit are being welcomed and their opportunities will continue to grow.

Business challenges can be overcome – The healthcare industry is not necessarily as regulated as it appears to be and when Healthcare professionals, although they require extremely stringent qualifications and technical expertise, enlist the services of business minded people or partners, they can succeed in the PHC space. A typical example of this (and a critical area of focus in private practice) is to partner with experienced professional medical practice financial management experts who can handle every aspect of their very specific accounting and general financial requirements. MFI is just such a company and as our slogan suggests, we take care of the medical practitioner’s financial wellness, to allow them to focus on the wellness of their patient’s!

We hope these few good business reasons to enter the primary healthcare space have been helpful to you …and should you become one of us, please contact us to learn more about our services and the myriad of ways we assist those in private practice and all areas of the Private Healthcare space.