
Is an Ambulance Service Required to Register as a Credit Provider?
According to the National Credit Regulator (NCR), an entity is only considered to be a credit provider in terms of the National Credit Act if it is any of the following: (a) the party who supplies goods or services un...

Use of Point of Sale Terminals by Ambulance Services
A point of sale terminal is an electronic device used to process card payments from a customer to a provider. The point of sale terminal is typically used to process payments made with either a credit or debit card. Th...

The necessity of onboard heating and cooling systems in an ambulance
The necessity of onboard heating and cooling systems in an ambulance Private ambulance services in South Africa are not only expected to offer quality clinical care to patients, they are expected to offer such care i...

Medical insurance policies vs medical aid schemes
What is a medical insurance policy, and how does it compare to a medical aid scheme? Medical aid schemes are governed by the Medical Schemes Act and the Council for Medical Schemes. These schemes are required to comp...

Paying commission for patient recommendations
Paying another person, either directly or indirectly, in order to recommend patients to your healthcare practice or ambulance service, is in direct contradiction with the Guidelines for Good Practice in the Healthcare P...

Managing cash flow in a hostile administrative environment
There can be no doubt that the administration of the claims of one ambulance private ambulance service by a competing private ambulance is potentially anti-competitive. However, in the absence of intervention by auth...

Effective internal training
The need for an effective internal training program with an ongoing staff evaluation process cannot be emphasised enough. As healthcare practices that are regularly servicing a medical aid and private patient market,...

2016: A year in review
2016 has been a difficult year for the South African economy. The value of the Rand has been extremely volatile and the has drifted between anything from R18.90 per US Dollar to R13.20 per US Dollar. Those fluctuatio...

Negotiating a sustainable tariff for your ambulance service
It needs to be emphasised private ambulance service owners or managers remain responsible for the final negotiation and acceptance of tariffs for the coming year. While many medical aid scheme representatives may rel...

Is a bakkie appropriate for use as a private ambulance?
‘Bakkie’ is the common South African term for a light delivery vehicle with an enclosed cab and an open load area at the rear of the vehicle. A number of bakkies have been used by the Provincial Emergency Medical Servic...

Social media and patient confidentiality
Social media as we know it today was born in 2004 with the launch of Facebook, closely followed by Twitter in 2006. Since the late 2000s we have seen substantial growth in the utilisation of platforms such as Face...

Be the EMS leader, not the EMS follower
As community based services, independent private ambulance services are known for their personal touch and excellent levels of customer service. However, in an industry that has become increasingly competitive and even...

Safety and equipment within the ambulance
Unfortunately, the design of ambulances has historically not always taken crew and patient safety into consideration. Within the updated National EMS Regulations that have now been published for public comment, one of...

Changes in cervical spine immobilisation protocols
There is a need to rethink the traditionally held belief that all trauma patients should automatically receive full spinal immobilisation. Earlier studies had attributed pre-hospital neurological deterioration to a fail...

Overservicing patients
The Health Professions Council of South Africa’s guidelines on overservicing, perverse incentives, and related matters, or Booklet 5, states: “Health care practitioners shall not provide a service or perform or dir...

Prescribed Minimum Benefits: What you need to know
The Prescribed Minimum Benefits (PMB) are a list of 270 medical conditions that medical schemes are always liable to provide cover for, in order to ensure that scheme members are guaranteed a minimum level of cover – re...

Ambulance infection control: Understanding and applying it
Firstly, let’s clarify what the difference is between cleaning, sterilisation and disinfection. Cleaning involves merely removing soil from a surface. This usually includes the use of water and detergents. Sterilisati...

Lodging a complaint with the Council for Medical Schemes (CMS)
Did you know that if a medical aid fund, or an administrator acting on behalf of a medical aid fund with regards to the administration and payment of ambulance claims, has not paid your claim promptly and in full, that...

Rethink the way you understand and use spine boards
A number of recent studies are forcing us to rethink the way we understand and use spine boards. These studies have shown us that there are actually a lot of disadvantages to using spine boards in a general ‘fix-all’ ki...

Can’t we all just get along?
Some sort of interpersonal conflict is a guaranteed part of life, no matter who you are. At some point, somebody is going to disagree with you in a way that makes either you or them feel threatened. In most of those ins...

Bill you twice, shame on all of us
Instances of double and even triple billing of funds by a limited number of unscrupulous EMS providers are negatively affecting the image of the EMS industry. Such providers often invoice multiple funding sources for se...

Keep yourself and your ambulance service off the stretcher
Adequate insurance cover is a backbone for the ambulance industry. Without it, the smallest mishaps can completely cripple some very promising operations. With that in mind, SAPAESA and our broker partners are excited t...

New rules, same game
Rich diversity and stiff competition can be hugely beneficial to any industry. The challenge presented along with the benefits however, is that ensuring a minimum standard of service becomes quite difficult when your se...

Saying goodbye to ‘impatient report forms’
If the administration of a patient being put through the medical industry can be seen as a kind of athletic relay race, then a patient report form is the service provider's baton that they have to hand over. With any mi...
LATEST NEWS

Is an Ambulance Service Required to Register as a Credit Provider?
According to the National Credit Regulator (NCR), an entity is only considered to be a credit provider in terms of the National Credit Act if it is any of the following: (a) the party who supplies goods or services un...

Medical insurance policies vs medical aid schemes
What is a medical insurance policy, and how does it compare to a medical aid scheme? Medical aid schemes are governed by the Medical Schemes Act and the Council for Medical Schemes. These schemes are required to comp...
We are running an Advanced Life Support Service in the Western Cape and SAPEASA assisted us with our Western Cape Licence. This in itself proved to be quiet difficult but SAPEASA stood by us all the way. It is good to know that we belong to a governing body that strives to make the profession as a whole into a more professional, quality and world class service not only for patients but for the private ambulance sectors in our country. We wish Oliver and his team great success in the future and thank them for a great service.
In South Africa today with the high demand placed on the private sector emergency medical response services we have found a drastic need for a unified body that is able to provide guidance, instruction or simple advice when needed, from assistance with medical aid claims management to advise on registration criteria and equipment purchases SAPAESA has proven an invaluable tool for us as a small to medium enterprise in Gauteng and in some cases nationally.
We at Intensive Medical Rescue Paramedical Services strongly believe in governance of the private ambulance industry in South Africa and herewith SAPAESA is seen as a major potential role player. The smaller private ambulance services need a mouthpiece that is able to bark with the big dogs and once again, SAPAESA is the solution for this problem.
Another great advantage of being a SAPAESA member is access to equipment at discounted prices which assisted us immensely in the past and no doubt in future. these are just a few of the reasons why IMR have and will continue to encourage other private ambulance services whether old or new, to become members of SAPAESA.
We have found the sharing of information and assistance with service provider interactions highly valued as SAPAESA really has taken the fight of the “little guy” to the coal face and fought for us when little or no attention is paid to the smaller services by certain service providers for medical aid claims. Updates and commentary on legal frame work changes from the various departments of health etc. have been both informative and explained and allow us to not only bench mark standards but ensure legal compliance, a enormous benefit to us once again.
We would like to thank Oliver and his team for the excellent service, advice and products that we have purchased from them. When we started Eden911 we had a million questions, every time we needed advice we could call on Oliver and his team to direct us in the right direction with advice and assistance. Our calls and emails were always answered in a quick time giving us advice and guidance as we needed it. We bought our equipment from SAPEASA (which we love).