A new health care centre has opened in Century City with aims to provide patients with a full health care experience under one roof. Intercare describes themselves as a provider of integrated health care services in South Africa and has launched its fourth day-hospital and 16th medical centre since the company was founded in 2000.

With over 50,000 people living and working in the Century City community, the medical centre will be able to cater for patients within the area and patients who would prefer to use the facility.

The Intercare Day Hospital Century City has three operating theatres, a procedure room, and 24 beds, whilst the Medical Centre has a Centre for Lifestyle Management, a Dis-Chem pharmacy, General Practitioners, and a whole host of health disciplines. These include pathology for blood tests, radiology for x-rays, as well as biokineticists, dieticians, and physiotherapists.

“As GPs (General practitioners) three things have always come up with the patients, one is accessibility, two is convenience and three is affordability,” says Dr Jennifer Hanley, a GP at the new Intercare centre.

“In terms of accessibility it is open 7 days a week, the patients no longer have to make use of the after-hours facilities at a hospital that come at a huge cost to them and for convenience everything is available under one roof,” Dr Hanley continued.

This project cost R70 million and the day hospital houses specialists in hand surgery, orthopaedic surgery, plastic surgery, ENT, general surgery, gastroenterology, urology, ophthalmology, gynaecology, maxillofacial surgery and dentistry.

The whole premise behind the hospital is to have patients walk in, be seen to immediately and if a specialist is required then they will be able to see the specialist within the same building. Furthermore if surgery is required then you will be able to have it on the same day and leave within a few hours instead of having to spend money on an extended hospital stay.

“Everything is contracted,” Dr Hanley mentioned. This means that patients will pay fees that they would expect to be pay for their normal GP. This GP will now be housed in a facility that aims to provide various health care operations in one building. VOC  (Umarah Hartley)