Beat the mid-year medical blues

There are ways to help manage your costs after your medical savings account is depleted.

- By Neesa Moodley

We're into the second half of the year and you may be one of thousands of medical scheme members now finding your medical savings accounts are depleted, leaving you to pay directly for day-to-day costs.

According to the Council for Medical Schemes 2022/23 annual report, South Africans paid close to R40-billion out of pocket for healthcare, with nearly half of this going towards outpatient services, not hospital stays. These costs include essential visits to specialists, radiologists and dentists, which are often not fully covered once medical savings accounts are exhausted.

Although there is no magic fix, there are ways to change the way you access healthcare to make it more affordable.

For example, Tania Joffe, founder of Unu Health, says that instead of spending R500 or more on a face-to-face GP visit, you could opt to speak to a doctor for a fraction of that cost through a telemedicine app.

“The old model of always visiting your GP or specialist in person for everything just isn’t sustainable any more,” says Joffe. “It’s time to embrace the hybrid model that includes telemedicine.”