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The Government Employees Health Plan (Gems) and the Board of Healthcare Funders have urgently gone to court on Sunday to prohibit the public release of an interim report on racial discrimination against physicians by health plans.
The app says the interim report, which will be released publicly Sunday noon at a press conference, makes “scathing allegations and findings regarding Gems (and others).”
The applicants say Gems has not seen the interim report or been given an opportunity to comment on it. Nor was it supposed, in terms of the Law of medical regimes or the terms of reference of the investigation, that it would be made public in the intermediate stage.
The request, scheduled to be heard on Sunday afternoon, says Gems was informed that the interim report contained findings “that some of the current procedures followed by medical schemes to enforce their rights under MSA s59. they are unfair, that black providers are unfairly discriminated against on the basis of race and that there is unfair discrimination in results ”.
The applicants said that if these findings were made public “without the schemes having first been granted the right to consider the interim report,” it would “permanently tarnish the names and reputations of the schemes in question.”
“There is no way to repair that damage once it has been inflicted,” they said.
However, in an affidavit of response, the chair of the investigation panel, Tembeka Ngcukaitobi SC, said that the panel had made it clear from the outset that the process would be public and that the panel would be “accountable to both the public and to the Council of Medical Regime and the parties ”.
He said applicants had made extensive written and oral presentations during the investigation and had known since Nov. 27 that the panel was going to publicly release the interim report. The urgency of their court case was “created by themselves,” he said.
“The public has a right to know what the findings are, even in the middle stage,” Ngcukaitobi said.
The investigation was announced in June of last year by the Health Schemes Council and was set up to investigate complaints, including those of racial discrimination, blacklists of payments, blocked payments, demands for confidential clinical information, intimidation and harassment.
This is a developing story
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