CAPITAL: The Voice of Business Issue 1, 2015 | Page 61

PCB AWARDS

MMC - rooted in the community

M

idlands Medical Centre (Pty)
Ltd, the Nedbank PCB Business
of the Year in the services
sector, is one of the few
independently black-owned hospitals in
South Africa. It is also different to many
other hospitals in that almost all of its
shareholders are medical doctors.
“This means that they have a vested
interest in the hospital,” says Kavith
Harrilall, Marketing Officer of Midlands
Medical Centre (MMC).
“It is a doctor-driven, patient-focused
hospital,” says the new hospital manager,
Dr Douglas Ross, who took up his position
at MMC towards the end of last year.
The Nedbank PCB award adjudicators
agreed, and said that “management was
found to care passionately about staff and
patients, and it is obvious that the company
lives up to its motto: ‘We always care’”
.
MMC was recognised by the PCB with this
award for its passion and vision, exceptional
financial performance, the application of
sound management principles, and its
subscription to the highest ethics. The
adjudicators were particularly impressed
with MMC’s values around people.
MMC was started by a small group
of doctors in 1988 to provide access to
hospital care for non-white residents in the
downtown part of Pietermaritzburg. Two
of the original group of founding doctors
are still on the board of directors today.
“It is very much a community hospital,”
points out Ross. “It doesn’t have a corporate
head office elsewhere and wants to be the
hospital for this area.”
This ambition is apparent in the
impressive expansion that the hospital,
which faces onto Masukwana, Williams and

MMC is presently embarking on
a R150-million expansion.

An artist’s impression of what
Midlands Medical Centre’s
footprint will look like once the
expansion is complete, with a
close-up view of the upgraded
admissions area and the upgraded
ambulance arrivals area, which is
under a porte-cochère between
two wings of the hospital.
GRAPHICS: Supplied.

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