Cybercafé operators are reaping handsomely from patients referred to them for Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF) registration by officials in public hospitals where digital systems are reportedly dysfunctional.
Investigations by the Nation have established possible collusion, with hospital officials directing patients to cybercafés located near health facilities for the registration at fees ranging from Sh300 to Sh500.
Some officials are said to own the businesses hence the motivation to refer patients there for assistance, making access to healthcare costlier. The government has said the registration is free.
Officials in hospitals are saying the government-issued tablets supplied to support SHIF registration are not working hence the need to refer patients to cybercafés such as the 20 identified in 15 counties in the course of the Nation investigation.
Hospitals are reporting hitches with the Sh104.8 billion Integrated Healthcare Information Technology System (IHTS) the government rolled out three months after signing a deal with a Safaricom-led consortium, hence the thriving enterprise.
If a facility is attending to 300 patients in a day, with 200 not yet enrolled under SHIF, at a fee of Sh300, the cost for the 200 will total Sh60,000 per day, translating to Sh1,8 million per month.
Considering there are hundreds of facilities in the counties, and it has been two months since the transition to the new health system, the service is bringing in millions for the business owners.
Since the rollout of the new system, the government has recorded 15 million registrations, a poor performance considering Kenya has a population of 55 million.
Officials, mostly in public hospitals nationwide, are taking advantage of the fact that thousands of Kenyans in rural areas are not tech-savvy or do not own smartphones. In remote areas where internet connectivity is not reliable, the problem is worse.
“I brought my mother to Iguhu county hospital on Monday for a check-up because she has been ailing but I could not enrol her for SHIF. I was told to go outside the hospital to a specific cybercafé since that is where they do SHIF registrations. There, the attendant charged Sh300 to register us,” Ms Emily Masitsa from Kakamega County told the Nation. She said officials at the hospital told her SHIF registration within the facility “was not working”.
A month ago, Health Cabinet Secretary Debra Barasa had launched SHIF registration at Iguhu hospital but it seems everything stopped working after she left.
When the Nation contacted the facility’s management, there was no response. But a senior medic at the hospital who is not authorised to speak to the media claimed the order to direct patients to specific cybercafés around the health facility “came from above”.
At Bungoma County Referral Hospital, Mr Jackson Wekesa told the Nation that this week he paid Sh500 at a cybercafé near the facility for the registration. He needed a minor surgery on his leg after an accident involving his boda boda.
“When I got there, a female medic gave me the phone number of a cybercafé attendant she said would attend to me because their systems were not reliable and did not work most of the time,” Mr Wekesa said.
Officials at the facility declined to disclose whether they had received the tablets the government promised to dispatch for free SHIF registration.
We reached out to Medical Services Principal Secretary Harry Kimtai on the matter but he had not responded to our text messages and phone calls by the time of publication. Dr Barasa received our queries but declined to respond.
According to the latest official data, there were 15,343,104 registrations as of November 25. The government reported it transitioned 5,901,322 Kenyans from the now defunct National Healthcare Insurance Fund to SHIF and recorded 9,441,782 new registrations.
Kiambu tops with 492,578, followed by Kisumu (229,553), Bomet (174,781), Kericho (168,073) and Nyeri (163,781). Kirinyaga (135,900), Embu (121,326), Laikipia (96,970) and Tharaka-Nithi (76,230) follow in that order. Mandera (33,727), Turkana (30,457), Lamu (30,003), West Pokot (28,605) and Garissa (26,233) have recorded the least registrations. The Health ministry allocated each county varying targets.
