Private health sector advocates for quality healthcare services and patient safety
Healthcare regulations and quality standards are aimed at ensuring that health services are safe, effective and of good quality, and that they are provided in accredited healthcare facilities by duly qualified health professionals.
The Kenya Healthcare Federation (KHF) health regulations and quality standards committee held a breakfast meeting at KHF offices on 16th August 2018. The meeting was chaired by the committee chair, Ms. Millicent Olulo. In their previous meeting, the committee had engaged Ms. Doris Mueni, Deputy Director, Kenya Accreditation Services (KENAS), to clarify on the functions of accreditation and certification bodies. She advised that accreditation ensures an organization is competent to perform specific functions in a reliable, credible and accurate manner, while certification is provided to mark compliance with a standard or specification. There are major benefits of accreditation such as quality improvement in internal operations, safeguarding credibility of results from conformity assessment activities, and improved market image.
There has been much engagement between Ministry of Health (MoH), Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS) and the Kenya Accreditation Service (KENAS) to see how to adopt the Kenya Quality Model for Health (KQMH) as national standards for quality and patient safety. It was noted that KQMH has been revised and piloted in four counties and that the next steps as outlined in the tool are roll out of adequate human resources for health, definition of the private sector’s and counties’ roles, establishment of clear road maps based on the pilot and assessment, making a sustainability plan, and identifying public – private partnership (PPP) opportunities for the private sector in implementing KQMH.
It was also noted that there should be discussions with MoH on the Universal Health Coverage (UHC) agenda, particularly on the following aspects: Whether it is prudent to solely rely on the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) to deliver UHC for Kenyans – would this compromise quality of care? Secondly, there needs to be a focus on quality assurance and a reliable supply chain. Ms. Faith Muigai urged KHF to have a strong position on quality of care. Ms. Muigai will develop a position statement to advocate for quality of care for UHC which will be presented to the Parliamentary health committee. There was a suggestion that Dr. Charles Kandie and Dr. Jared Nyakiba who deal with quality and safety policies at MoH be invited to the next committee meeting to enrich further discussions on accreditation of hospitals and patient safety.
The committee held elections of officials for a new term. Ms. Millicent Olulo and Mr. Antony Jaccodul were re-elected as chair and vice chair respectively. This was the first committee meeting under the directorship of the newly elected vice chair, Dr. Elizabeth Wala, and Director, Ms. Faith Muigai.