Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale, on Tuesday, September 30, held a consultative meeting with the consortium of faith-based religious organisations to strengthen collaboration on the rollout of the Social Health Authority (SHA).
During the meeting, the two parties agreed on several issues, including SHA's allocation of relationship managers per facility and organising joint clinics to improve service delivery.
According to the Ministry of Health, the relationship managers would include account managers for all public, faith-based and private hospitals in the country.
Speaking during the meeting, the CS also expressed the Ministry's commitment to promptly clearing all pending SHA claims, adhering to a first-in-first-out basis.
To enhance service delivery in faith-based hospitals, the consortium of faith-based organisations agreed to submit a list of needy remote facilities that require digitisation support.
The stakeholders affirmed that the digitisation of the needy remote facilities would ease SHA claims processing and patient management.
The faith-based organisations also agreed to use their platforms to sensitise members on the benefits of SHA and promote payment by setting up registration desks in churches and mosques.
While addressing the consultative forum, Duale went ahead to apprise the forum of the government's progress in rolling out SHA, revealing that the new health insurance scheme had so far onboarded over 25 million Kenyans.
Additionally, the CS disclosed that SHA had already paid a total of Ksh10 billion and Ksh59.3 billion for Primary Health Care and Social Health Insurance Funds, respectively.
"Currently, the Digital Health Agency has digitised 3,386 of a target of 6,500 facilities in the public sector. The Ministry has supported the faith-based organisations' facilities in digitisation by issuing them with 100 gadgets as per their earlier request and trained their officers on the system," Duale stated.
He further informed the consortium that the Ministry had written to the National Treasury requesting Ksh5.4 billion to be factored into the Supplementary budget to settle the legacy NHIF debt below Ksh10 million as per the presidential directive.
The faith-based organisations appreciated the progress in the resolution of issues raised by them and Kenyans at large. The Ministry promised to work tirelessly to resolve the challenges raised.
