Thursday, October 24, 2024—President William Ruto's government has warned hospitals registered under the Social Health Authority (SHA) to stop charging cash for services, or else they will be kicked out.
Speaking to health stakeholders
in Mombasa, Health Principal Secretary Harry Kimtai threatened to deregister
hospitals that deny patients medical services or charge them cash.
He noted that some health
facilities deliberately declined to utilise the government's system and instead
demanded cash from patients.
PS Kimtai underscored the need
for hospitals especially private facilities to heed the government's directive,
warning that facilities denying poor Kenyans access to free healthcare services
would be deregistered.
“Some of these facilities are
deliberately refusing to use the system, some claim that the system is not
working. A case in point is that for dialysis patients, they use the system and
for other patients, they don’t," the PS noted.
Kimtai revealed that the
government would soon publish a list of all hospitals registered under SHA to
enable Kenyans to identify the health facilities contracted by the government
to provide free healthcare services.
"Some hospitals give very
flimsy reasons but now we want to publish them that these are the hospitals who
have been contracted so that a Kenyan goes there and they are asked for cash
then we will take action against those facilities," the PS reiterated.
The Kenyan DAILY POST
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