Ministry of Health seeks additional Ksh.6B to boost SHA services

The Ministry of Health is seeking an additional Ksh.6 billion in the supplementary budget to boost the primary health care fund and the emergency and chronic illness fund under the Social Health Authority (SHA).

Appearing before the National Assembly's Health Committee on Thursday, Medical Services Principal Secretary Harry Kimtai defended the ministry’s budget allocations and pushed for more funds to support SHA and other operations within the ministry.

Further, Kimtai stated that SHA benefits continue to be revised upwards based on the availability of funds, noting that a gazette notice has already been submitted to allow the revised oncology benefits from Ksh.400,000 to Ksh.550,000 to take effect.

"When you have paid your premiums wherever you are at level 4, 5, 6 and you are receiving Cancer treatment, the benefit package that you are entitled to is Ksh.550,000 and not Ksh.400,000 that was published,” said Kimtai.

He added that SHA has so far registered 20.2 million Kenyans, reinforcing the need for an additional Ksh.3 billion to boost primary healthcare at level 1, 2, and 3 hospitals where services remain free for all registered members.

"Primary healthcare is not restricted to public facilities. It goes to faith-based, private, and all facilities that have been contracted at levels 2 and 3. They are entitled,” said the Medical Services PS.

Kimtai appeared alongside other heads of semi-autonomous government agencies under the State Department for Medical Services who were taken to task on issues that Kenyans are facing with the medical scheme.

"Visibility in the system by the provider that you are just paying money blanketly, they don't know what has been paid. You can't explain what has been paid because they can't view the system. But in NHIF, you were able to say you have been paid Ksh.2 million for this patient, Ksh.200,000 for this patient,” Health Committee Vice Chair Patrick Munene said.

"We have agreed that we will publish the amounts we are paying to healthcare providers, and this will include all facilities that we are paying. This will help the public and any other interested party to know how much has been paid to which provider for what purpose,” SHA Acting CEO Robert Ngasira said.

Additionally, Kimtai noted that the ministry is working to address all the challenges that the medical scheme has been facing since inception, adding that all the packages within SHA will be revised upwards subject to availability of funds.

"In the event that you exhaust the emergency and chronic illness fund, the ICCIF comes in to take care of additional treatment,” he said.

“I think the ministry is finalizing the tariffs and we had agreed that most of the areas that had been raised by the public will be addressed by that committee supported by computations that will affect the money that will be coming in and going out.”

The Treasury was put on the spot over what members and ministry officials say are delays and sometimes lack of disbursement of agreed monies to healthcare facilities.