Access to electronic medical records and improved health literacy are likely the main factors contributing to the downward trend in surgical procedures, Richard Friedland, chief executive officer of Netcare said in an interview on Monday.
"We don’t want to keep people in hospital for inefficient reasons — we don’t want people to have operations that aren’t necessary," Friedland said. There’s a different way of doing it, where patients are empowered and they are equal partners in their health care, he said.