SAM’S SENSE: SHIF gaps - Communicate, but what?

It’s been three days of the rollout of the Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF) under the Social Health Authority (SHA). Three days of what could be described as a season of cluelessness and confusion. A time that many in the country have been grappling with questions of what exactly is the meaning of Social Health Authority, Social Health Insurance Fund, Primary Healthcare Fund, Emergency, Chronic and Critical Illness Fund.

A season during which millions in the country are wondering how do they register? How do they begin to benefit from the medical scheme? A season that former NHIF members have received messages informing them they have been migrated successfully to the Social Health Authority. Just when they thought they ought to register afresh through the SHA online platforms.

For patients, they have been subjected to unfair patience as some of the health facilities declined to honour their service requests saying NHIF ceased operating. It’s been a week of enhanced communication by the government, hoping to win the confidence of the people. To have them register and own the new medical insurance scheme.

What doesn’t make sense however is how, more than ten months after the enactment of the new health laws, there is so much unknown about the programme. And the ignorance does not discriminate. We have seen it from the high offices in government, public officials who cannot coherently explain how the system should work. They cannot explain how non-employed contributors are supposed to determine how much they should pay. How a supposed means testing instrument is not ready for deployment. How those responsible have no idea of the latest progress in addressing that glaring gap.

Isn’t it surprising that some of the legislators who just a year ago were deeply involved in enacting the laws are pleading ignorance?

And how is this summarized? It’s always reduced to this phrase, that “we have a communication problem.” But, what is communication? Let’s use a basic definition. That communication is the process by which information is exchanged or passed. Let’s underline, INFORMATION. Information; a set of facts about something or someone. Meaning, information is the commodity of communication. Without it, there is nothing you can communicate.

Without information, the streets will tell you, “There is nothing you are telling us.”

And so, let us address the real issue: Inability to communicate information that would create understanding, change perceptions, and cause change in the society.

There is so much contained in the health laws, the regulations, the processes and the efforts being undertaken by government officials under different institutions. Government officials must consume that information and together with the experts pass it on through a channel called communication. Paying attention to details is one thing. It is another to understand those details. It is another level to now pass on those details. While at it, the feedback shared by users, in this case the Kenyan public requires to be acted on. Respond to the questions and address the challenges highlighted. Ten months is too long a time for a country to be clueless about such an important transition in the country’s health sector.

Failing to address these gaps is to make a mockery of an entire system financed by the taxpayers to do just one thing, the right thing.

And that is my Sense tonight.