This news aggregator site highlights South African labour news from a wide range of internet and print sources. Each posting has a synopsis of the source article, together with a link or reference to the original. Postings cover the range of labour related matters from industrial relations to generalist human resources.
BusinessLive reports that the medical schemes regulator has revived a controversial plan to establish a central database of scheme members and is once again calling on schemes to provide personal details about their members.
The idea of a central database was first flighted by the Council for Medical Schemes (CMS) in 2017 and ran into immediate opposition from the Democratic Alliance (DA) and several schemes, who expressed concerns about what the data would be used for, and the potential infringement on members’ privacy. The CMS is a statutory body charged with overseeing the medical schemes industry, which provides cover to about 8.9-million people. It is pushing ahead with its plans for a national beneficiary registry, which it says will ultimately link to a patient registration system that the government plans to establish under National Health Insurance (NHI). To that end, the CMS is expanding a pilot programme that began several months ago with the Government Employees Medical Scheme (GEMS). CMS spokesperson Grace Khoza said the regulator was taking “the best possible” measures to protect members’ privacy and ensure their information did not end up in the wrong hands. GEMS principal officer Guni Goolab said “very minimal” data about the scheme’s members had been provided to the CMS to date, and none of it was health related.
- Read the full original of Tamar Kahn’s report on the above at BusinessLive
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page