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Dr Fundile Nyati: Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
Fundile as he prefers to be called, is a healthcare entrepreneur who is very passionate about making a tangible contribution towards improvement of the quality of lives of economically active people through healthcare interventions.
He grew up just outside Mthatha in the rural parts of the ‘former Transkei’, which is one of the most underdeveloped parts of our country. His parents owned a general dealer store, which was adjacent to a local primary health care clinic.
His day to day interaction with the clinic patients in his early childhood, whilst assisting in the shop made him to develop a keen interest in the field of medicine, and from as early as 5 years old, he dreamed and believed that he will be a medical doctor in adulthood. This dream was fulfilled 17 years later at 22 years of age. This achievement also happened to be his father’s unfulfilled dream.
He obtained his medical degree at the University Of Natal Medical School, in 1989, and 6 years later went back to the same institution to study further towards obtaining a post graduate Masters degree in Family Medicine. He qualified as a specialist in Family Physician in the year 2000.
He practiced medicine initially as an intern at Mthatha General Hospital, later he went into private practice in Port Elizabeth for a five-year period and later relocated to Johannesburg where he practiced for another four years.
Whilst finalizing the Masters In Family Medicine degree, the ‘entrepreneurial bug’ gained from his early childhood days was too much to resist, and he decided to enroll for a business management course with Manchester Business School to enable him to acquire deep general business skills that would augment his medical skills for him to be more confident and competent in providing innovative health care solutions to Corporate South Africa.
He completed his intensive 12 month Advanced Management Programme in Healthcare at the beginning of 1999. Soon thereafter, together with two business partners, they wasted no time in working towards setting up a health solutions company that would assist employers with implementation of value adding corporate health solutions.
They formed Proactive Health Solutions (PHS), and later approached Old Mutual South Africa to explore possibilities of a business partnership. Old Mutual bought into PHS’s business concept, and agreed to play a role of an institutional significant minority equity investor in PHS, which business relationship is still in place today.
During the 1st four and half years of PHS’s existence, Dr Nyati played a role of a a Medical Director for PHS responsible for ensuring the setting up of systems, processes and quality standards for our professional services, including client liaison and business development.
Afterwards he was promoted to a role of Chief Executive Officer for the company, a position he still holds, which entails oversight responsibilities on all the business functions of PHS, reporting to the Chairman of the Board of Directors.
During his 3 years tenure at the helm of PHS, the company has seen massive growth in terms of its client base, staff numbers and more importantly year on year profitability. Under his leadership PHS is now a market respected and established health solutions company with over 400 000 client employees under our professional management, mainly in the public and parastatal sectors. Going forward his main challenge in leading PHS is to help the company to grow to be the number one health solutions company in South Africa, and the rest of the continent, with significant private public partnerships with national, provincial and local government departments to assist in service delivery to the people in line with ‘Batho Pele/People First’ principles.
His other challenge is to ensure that there is development and retention of depth of quality leadership in the company to take the company forward in its growth path, when the time of ‘handing over the baton’ inevitably arrives in the next few years.
Outside his work, Dr Nyati is a sports fanatic, a keen follower of local and international rugby, cricket, tennis and soccer, and to this effect he spend about five years being a sports medical practitioner for one of the top teams in the Professional Soccer League, and in charge of the sport medical services during the 1996 African Nations Cup in the Port Elizabeth area.
Lastly, as a result of his passion on empowering ordinary people with healthcare knowledge, he hosted a health promotion radio show with the biggest commercial radio station in South Africa, MetroFM, wherein on a weekly basis he empowered millions of listeners to take more responsibility for their own health and to early identify their medical problems encouraging them to consult early with the relevant health care professionals.
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