Private Hospitals to Reject NHIF Patients

Thursday, January 27, 2022 –Government and private hospital owners are in a feud over payments for services rendered by the latter to patients.

According to news reaching Homenews.co.ke desk on Thursday January 27, private hospitals across the country will from Monday 31 deny patients services citing low pay as compared to public facilities.

Joseph Otieno, Head of Communications for the Kenya Association of Private Hospitals KAPH, disclosed that their industrial action was purely informed by concerns on how much government has been remitting to private facility owners as compared to public hospitals.

He argued that it cannot be possible that the private facilities can receive low payments and still be expected to deliver high quality services.

“Yes, they (NHIF) at times don’t even end up paying (in claims). We are compiling a number of complaints from our facilities before releasing an official report,” Otieno stated.

For quite some time now, the private hospitals sector has been at loggerheads with the insurer over claims.

Recently, more than 800 private hospitals had taken NHIF to court over the newly introduced bio-metric registration – with the hospitals claiming that they were given a limited time to comply with the new requirement.