A bid to put medical scheme Pro Sano under curatorship was put on hold on Friday as legal teams sought to reach an out-of-court settlement.
”Pro Sano is pleased to announce that the matter with the registrar of medical schemes will be resolved in terms of a court order, which it believes will be issued in the Cape High Court on Monday,” said Pro Sano chairperson Brian Jacobs on Friday.
Pro Sano remains confident of its position to oppose the registrar’s application for provisional curatorship, he said. ”We see the action by the registrar as premature and we stand by our original position that the most appropriate action would be the appointment of an inspector to investigate any alleged irregularities.”
The application, by the registrar of medical schemes, was to have been brought as an urgent matter in the Cape High Court on Friday morning.
Earlier in the day, Jacobs said the legal teams of the two sides held discussions after Judge Bennie Griesel had read the papers in the case and asked the two sides to draw up proposals on how the matter could be resolved out of court.
Jacobs said Pro Sano would welcome the appointment of an inspector in terms of section 51 of the Medical Schemes Act, and does not believe curatorship is the way to go. There is precedent for this, as an inspector was appointed once in the past, 10 years ago, to look into Pro Sano’s affairs.
”Let an inspector come. We’d welcome that,” he said.
The registrar, Patrick Masobe, intervened in June this year to stop what he said was a lengthy and damaging legal battle waged by Pro Sano, which had cost its members more than R44-million in legal fees with, he said, ”little or nothing to show for it”.
The matter related to a dispute with Medscheme over its administration of the scheme.
Masobe told Pro Sano’s trustees that they could be held personally liable for the legal fees, and threatened to use the Medical Schemes Act to stop them holding office if they were found not to be ”fit and proper” for their posts.
He also ordered the scheme not to fly certain of its members from Cape Town to Gauteng for the scheme’s annual meeting in Emperor’s Palace Hotel, saying this constituted ”further reckless expenditure of scheme funds”. — Sapa