Clumsy patient-friendly regulations could strip 25 000 of MPS cover

Abstract

The Medical Protection Society (MPS), a financial and legal haven for 25 000 South African health care practitioners and reliable source of recompense for countless casualties of care, may be legislated out of the country. Unless negotiations scheduled over the next 14 months result in amendments to the regulations, due to kick in this December, the MPS will from December 2011 be unable to protect its members from the legal consequences of any post-2011 adverse event. The new requirement is that private health care practitioners must sign up for cover using only insurers or indemnifiers registered under Section 7 of the Short-term Insurance Act, something the MPS, which is not a short-term insurer, cannot do.