By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The Pretoria high court has struck from the roll the application by the Government Employees Medical Scheme (Gems) and the Board of Healthcare Finders to interdict the public release of an interim report that makes interim findings about racial discrimination against doctors by medical schemes.
The order clears the way for the public release of the interim report, which according to the application papers makes “scathing allegations and findings in relation to Gems (and others)”.
The applicants had urgently approached the court just two hours before the report was due to be publicly released on Sunday.
Handing down her judgment on Tuesday, judge Colleen Collis said the applicants had failed to “convincingly persuade me why they did not deem it necessary and prudent to approach the court earlier on. Nothing prevented them from doing so.”
She said they had conceded in argument that they did know that the public release of the report had been envisaged earlier.
Given the public interest in the matter, they ought to have come to court earlier. Instead they “folded their arms” until two hours before the report was due to be released, she said.
The application says Gems was informed that the interim report contained findings “that some of the current procedures followed by the medical schemes to enforce their rights in terms of section 59 of the MSA [Medical Schemes Act] are unfair, that black providers are unfairly discriminated against on the grounds of race and that there is unfair discrimination in outcomes”.
GEMS had argued that the Section 59 investigative report contains scathing findings against GEMS that will have severe repercussions for the scheme.
They argued that it is not within the powers of Section 59 to release the report. They also argued that releasing the report would cause them irreparable harm, be prejudicial to them and damage their reputation. They say it is not stated in the Section 59 panel’s founding terms of reference that the report should be made public.
GEMS and Healthcare Funders also argued that the report should only be handed over to the Council of Medical Aids and that they should be given enough time to respond to the contents of the report.
The two bodies want the report to be interdicted pending an application for a declarator to determine the exact powers and functions of the Section 59 panel.
Council for the Section 59 panel, however emphasised that there was no basis for the urgent application since GEMS had ample time to stop the release of the probe report, but failed to act.
They argued the urgency cited by the applicants was self created and asked the court to dismiss the application as they knew as far back as last year that the report would be released to the public.
The probe started in 2019, following several allegations by medical practitioners, of racial discrimination allegedly by medical schemes and administrators.