National Hospital Insurance Fund, service providers at loggerheads
Owners of rural private hospitals have raised concern on how the National Hospital Insurance Fund is handling the proposed service provider contracts.
Their move comes after NHIF issued a one-month extension to current contract with hospital care providers from December 30, 2021 to January 31.
They are reading a sinister motive in the new directive, accusing the Ministry of Health of working behind the scenes, even as it emerged yesterday that a meeting bringing together doctors’ unions and associations on the issue is in the offing.
It is understood that NHIF has been reaching out to managers of various service providers separately with a view to have them buy the initiative.
This has been one of the concerns with medics, who argue that a meeting where all the stakeholders participate will be appropriate.
“They extended it by a month. But they have not reached out to us for discussions,” Dr Brian Lishenga (pictured), Chairman of the Rural Private Hospitals Association of Kenya (RUPHA) told People Daily yesterday.
A week ago, NHIF held a meeting with faith-based health facilities that ended with a request for NHIF to extend the deadline.
It also emerged that NHIF has been hosting similar meetings this week, but with scant details on who is involved.
Members of the rural private hospitals have accused the Ministry of Health of micro-managing the process.
They exonerated NHIF, accusing unnamed top officials who are out to make a kill from the process.
“We are seeing the hand of the ministry in this whole process,” a member who did not wish to be quoted noted.
It has also emerged that NHIF has been trying to negotiate separately with various providers in small batches as opposed to bringing all stakeholders to one table so that they can agree on the way forward.
Sustainable cost
For instance, a meeting the health insurer had called with RUPHA did not take off yesterday, as managers of the hospitals insisted it should bring everybody on board so they can agree on a sustainable cost in healthcare.
“They had proposed to meet us yesterday, but we told them this is not how it should work.
We advised them to call all of us so that we can agree that for Kenya, the sustainable cost of healthcare is this much so that we can sign the contracts, but since they haven’t done that, it is a wait and see,” Lishenga said.
However, it has also emerged that NHIF has invited Kenya Medical Pharmaceutical and Dentist Union for a meeting next week to deliberate on the process.
“They had not reached out to us, but on Tuesday they sent us an invite for a meeting next week,” KMPDU Secretary General Dr Devji Atellah said.
