KHF Healthcare financing committee held it’s meeting this year on 22nd February 2018, to deliberate on the healthcare financing areas to focus on this year. The meeting which was chaired by Mr. Isaac Nzioka, singled out Universal Healthcare Coverage (UHC), payer provider relationship, capacity building, NHIF engagement and engagement with the county health governments on Healthcare Financing structures.
In Kenya, UHC has not been well achieved due to many contributing factors such as; financial instability, poor health infrastructure and low insurance coverage. UHC being one of H.E President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Big four pillar is therefore, key to this committee this year as it will ensure access to promotive, preventive, curative and rehabilitative health services of sufficient quality. UHC will also reduce financial hardship when paying for healthcare services.
The committee saw it fitting to form a UHC subcommittee which will be chaired by Mr. Sereni Vittorio of Johnson & Johnson. The subcommittee will specifically handle the engagement with county health governments on HCF structures, a white paper on “Recommended Model from Private Sector on UHC”, participate in various UHC forums being organized by the CoG and member’s organizations.
Other sub-committees formed during this meeting from the key focus areas are the payer provider relationship sub-committee to be chaired by Ms. Ann Wanja of The Nairobi Hospital and capacity building sub-committee to be chaired by Mr. Isaac Nzyoka of UAP insurance. These sub-committees will put in effort in to develop private health sector models in healthcare financing.
This committee will also send representatives to participate and represent KHF in the Healthcare Financing Technical Working Group, which is one of the 9 Health Act TWGs formed by MOH and World Bank towards the implementation of The Health Act 2017. The meeting was well attended by HFC committee members namely; UAP Insurance, Care Pay, Fountain Healthcare, Minet Kenya, Johnson Johnson, Smart Applications, The Nairobi Hospital, Association of Professional Coders Kenya (APCk) and Emergency Medical Foundation Kenya (EMFK).