Quali Health: Balancing Profitability and Quality in Healthcare

This case study examines Dr. Nthabiseng Legoete's Quali Health, a healthcare initiative in South Africa established to address the lack of accessible and affordable healthcare for marginalized communities. The case highlights the three pillars of Quali Health: affordability, convenience, and quality, enabled by technology. Dr. Legoete challenged the high costs and poor services of private sector doctors, offering more affordable services, including medication, and establishing convenient locations. The model created local employment opportunities and overcame language barriers by employing local staff. Quali Health implemented patient feedback mechanisms to improve services and expanded services to include HIV and pregnancy tests and vaccinations. Despite starting without external funding, Dr. Legoete ensured profitability by utilizing locally trained staff, attracting investment from Nedbank and driving down prices in the private sector. The case concludes with a positive impact on the quality of healthcare and employment opportunities for the people of South Africa.

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Dr Nthabiseng Legoete and Quali Health in profitability and quality delivery for patients
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Dr Nthabiseng Legoete and Quali Health in profitability and quality delivery for patients.
Nthabiseng Legoete, a South African doctor, established Quali Health in May 2016 as a
result of her life story. Her decision was influenced by the need for marginalized communities to
access essential healthcare services in her country. The Quali Health model was established on
three main pillars; Affordability, convenience and quality health care. Technology brought all
these pillars together to achieve her desired goals1
Dr. Legoete said that medical practitioners within the private sector exploited patients at a
charge of between 350 to 400 Rand yet they provided poor services. With the establishment of
Quali Health, she opted for a cost of 280 Rand, which catered for all the services a patient
acquired, including medication. She established more branches to ensure that patients and staff
could walk to work and back. Because of this, there is no transport cost incurred, bringing about
the affordability part.
This foundation also created employment opportunities for the locals whereby they could
get tenders to do laundry and prepare food for patients and staff. At Quali Health, language and
culture barriers since Dr. Legoete used the local community as staff; therefore, there was ease in
communication1. After treatment, the patients were given an opportunity to the rate the services
and this helps the management to identify their setbacks and improves service deliveries.
Dr. Legoete expanded her foundation by adding more services like HIV and pregnancy
tests and vaccines for various diseases which were a challenge for the marginalized people to
access. With the introduction of these additional services, there was an improvement of the
patients' visits by 35% from the previous 14%2.
1 Legoete, Seipati N. "Factors that influence the non-urgent use of emergency departments in the South
African Private Health sector." PhD diss., University of Pretoria, 2016.

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Dr. Legoete started her foundation without any funds from investors, and she, therefore,
had to rely on the funds paid by patients and also inject her own money. Later the Nedbank
invested some money on Legoete’s foundation. For her to ensure profitability, she opted to use
locally trained staff who did not require much pay rather than getting staff from outside. With
this strategy she was able to pays the investors and get more funds. The Quali Health has forced
most private-sector doctors to reduce prices of their services with the fear of losing customers.
To Dr. Legoete, she believes she has done her best2.
Conclusion
Quali health foundation has had a positive impact to the people of South Africa. This is
because it has improved the quality of health care for the marginalized individuals. Besides, it
has created employment opportunities for them.
2 Pillay-van Wyk, Victoria, William Msemburi, Ria Laubscher, Rob E. Dorrington, Pam Groenewald, Tracy
Glass, Beatrice Nojilana et al. "Mortality trends and differentials in South Africa from 1997 to 2012:
second National Burden of Disease Study." The Lancet Global Health 4, no. 9 (2016): e642-e653.
3 Scott, Des, Gillian D. Ferguson, and Jennifer Jelsma. "The use of the EQ-5D-Y health related quality of life
outcome measure in children in the Western Cape, South Africa: psychometric properties, feasibility and
usefulness-a longitudinal, analytical study." Health and quality of life outcomes 15, no. 1 (2017): 12.

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Bibliography
Legoete, Seipati N. "Factors that influence the non-urgent use of emergency departments in the
South African Private Health sector." PhD diss., University of Pretoria, 2016.
Scott, Des, Gillian D. Ferguson, and Jennifer Jelsma. "The use of the EQ-5D-Y health related
quality of life outcome measure in children in the Western Cape, South Africa:
psychometric properties, feasibility and usefulness-a longitudinal, analytical
study." Health and quality of life outcomes 15, no. 1 (2017): 12.
Pillay-van Wyk, Victoria, William Msemburi, Ria Laubscher, Rob E. Dorrington, Pam
Groenewald, Tracy Glass, Beatrice Nojilana et al. "Mortality trends and differentials in
South Africa from 1997 to 2012: second National Burden of Disease Study." The Lancet
Global Health 4, no. 9 (2016): e642-e653.