Johannesburg, 02 Jun 2021
As selected centres begin the country’s largest vaccination roll-out, Discovery is the first to activate Healthbridge’s vaccination billing system at its head office in Sandton, and this will soon be applied to its planned additional vaccination sites nationwide.
The vaccination roll-out is an extensive exercise and requires careful financial planning by private vaccination sites. Managing this includes purchasing the required vaccine stock from government at the defined price that then needs to be claimed against the medical aid schemes that the members belong to, together with a small fee for administering the vaccine. This fee income then goes back into the cashflow required to purchase further batches of vaccines.
Leveraging 22 years as a leading healthcare technology provider, Healthbridge built its vaccination billing system in less than six weeks after initial contact with Discovery. The system will support the billing and data capture process at the vaccination sites and is currently live at 1 Discovery Place in Sandton. True to Healthbridge’s reputation as a leader in ease-of-use technology, the patient flow seamlessly accounts for the important step of capturing billing information, as part of the vaccination process at the site
Commenting on the collaboration, Head of Discovery HealthCare Services, Liora Katz, said: “During our investigation to select a technology partner, it became clear that Healthbridge was best positioned to develop a system that supports the flow of patients and information at our vaccination centres because of their track record in developing leading health tech. It goes without saying that we need a robust solution that is easy to use and is integrated with all medical aids to be able to carry out a vaccination roll-out of this magnitude and Healthbridge delivered in record time.”
Healthbridge CEO, Luis da Silva, said: “We are incredibly pleased to have worked with Discovery to develop the system. While our expertise is in providing clinical and billing software for private medical practices, our ethos of developing easy-to-use technology for better healthcare outcomes has allowed us to appropriately develop a custom solution for one of the country’s biggest health challenges. We are very proud to be part of the solution.”
Healthbridge envisages that the solution will be leveraged at vaccination centres managed by other key health players as more sites become accredited. Momentum Health has also already decided to roll-out Healthbridge’s system at its vaccination centres.
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