Vitality Health closes gaps in pre-hospital care

606

sweet potato

Filling the gap in medical emergency services in Lesotho and saving lives that might otherwise be lost unnecessarily is the main mission of Vitality Health Lesotho.

This is according to Semethe Raleche, Executive Director of Vitality Health Lesotho, who toldlesotho times Their vision to save lives was born out of the many rejections they received from insurance companies they wanted to work with.

Vitality Health Lesotho was established in 2014 to provide pre-hospital emergency care with a clear vision to save lives.

Mr Raleche said they have approached health insurers and proposed various collaborative initiatives.

“Unfortunately, most health insurers did not trust them as a start-up entity and rejected their proposal,” he said.

These rejections forced them to become more innovative. They noticed that Lesotho was in dire need of emergency medical care.

As a result, they drafted a strategy to save lives and launched hospital emergency services in Lesotho in 2019, Mr Laleche recalled.

They started with one ambulance and later launched their own health insurance product.

“After being rejected twice, we were left with no choice but to build our own in-house health insurance product to provide Basotho with unlimited emergency and medical clinical services, as well as hospital cashback on hospitalisation,” Mr Laleche said.

“That was our first generation of health insurance products. We can’t say we’ve been successful. We feel we’re still in the beginning stages of growth and expect to expand over time.”

According to Mr Laleche, the company has grown tremendously over the years, from owning one ambulance in 2019 to four today.

“We provide support in the ambulance service sector. We operated in this field for a few years until we saw that there was a need in the market for specialized services in the pre-hospital care sector. This was mainly due to personal experience. I had some personal experience once where some of my close relatives were injured and needed pre-hospital care but could not get it,” said Mr Raleche.

He said life-saving emergency services prevent people from dying needlessly, and that’s why they invest heavily in pre-hospital care.

He added that they were not discouraged by the insurer’s rejection. Instead, they were inspired and decided to “go ahead with the purchase of our first advanced life support ambulance.”

“That’s where our competitive advantage is, we can tell a good story to the Basotho people,” he said.

He said that over time, they have become an evolving company that makes choices based primarily on what society wants.

He said their most pressing need is to narrow the risks in pre-hospital care and “further identify other risks in health care.”

Mr Raleche said they had recently added medicines to their service basket.

“We operate retail pharmacies, cleaning and emergency services,” he said.

The company received a lot of attention and was able to grow its membership base, especially during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.

“We have had customers in danger under our health insurance products (during the pandemic) and we have saved their lives with emergency medicines like oxygen.

“During that time, we were even known as the oxygen supplier because we always had oxygen in our reserves available for the public,” he said.

He said they were the first company to launch a Covid management plan, so they were approached by insurance companies to include their members in the plan.

GermanyHe said Vitality Health has been a pillar of strength across multiple industries during the pandemic, adding that they have “never lost a patient in our care.”

As Lesotho was overwhelmed during that period, Mr Laleche recalled how they provided a medical emergency response, transferring critically ill patients from one health facility to another.

They also provide tailored medical care to critically ill patients under the Covid Management Plan.

Despite the challenges and rejections along the way, Mr. Raleche no longer sees rejection as a bad thing, but rather a “blessing in disguise” because it forces you to think and innovate.

The rejection fueled their creativity, he said, encouraging them to find other services.

“Sometimes being rejected is not always a bad thing. It can be a good thing that leads to innovation and success,” he concluded.