The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) has suspended the Nairobi Women's Hospital from its list of service providers following a damning exposé about shady goings-on at the facility.
As first reported by the Daily Nation on Thursday, February 6, the authority advised its staff to seek services from other facilities until the matter is resolved.
The latest move by the authority piles more owes on the hospital after several insurance firms moved to cancel links with the facility.
Quoting a memo dated Wednesday, February 5, Citizen TV noted that staff of the authority were adviced to shun the hospital until a raft of contentious issues got resolved between the two parties.
This comes just a day after several health insurance providers in the country published notices announcing suspensions of services from the hospital.
The communication was made in a statement released by the Association of Kenya Insurers and several insurance firms on Tuesday, February 4, following an exposé that painted the hospital as exploiting patients to maximize costs.
The insurance firms indicated that as of February 5, 2020, they would suspend their ties with the hospital pending resolution of the scandal.
A few weeks ago, screenshots of conversations alleged to be from a WhatsApp group of Nairobi Women’s Hospital staffers were exposed online.
These chats indicated that the staff was given daily targets which they were supposed to achieve through the admission of patients, a matter that was reported to be monitored on an hourly and daily basis.
An exposé by Citizen TV lifted the lid on a collusion scheme between the staff and insurance companies from patients with medical covers by inflating the cost of drugs.
After the exposé, Nairobi Women's Hospital announced that it would immediately commence investigations on the allegations, doubting that there was any truth behind it.
"We have noted with a lot of concern reports appearing in various media platforms suggesting that there is some systematic approach by the hospital to generate revenue from patients.
“Although we don’t believe this is the case, and in fact, it is antithetical to our foundational principles, we take these allegations very seriously and are conducting an internal review as well as cooperating with the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentist Council as they carry out their independent review,” read a statement in part.
