A bid to put medical scheme Prosano under curatorship was put on hold on Friday as legal teams sought to reach an out-of-court settlement.
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.
However Prosano chairperson Brian Jacobs said mid-morning that the legal teams of the two sides were in discussions.
He said 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 Prosano would welcome the appointment of an inspector in terms of section 51 of the Medical Schemes Act, and did not believe curatorship was the way to go.
There was precedent for this, as an inspector had been appointed once in the past, ten years ago, to look into Prosano'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 Prosano 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 Prosanao'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