National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) attributed system failure to a technical issue which occurred at its headquarters, located in Nairobi, on Friday, September 8.
Through an official statement, NHIF stated that a faulty transformer caused a power outage affecting service delivery across the country.
NHIF, however, assured customers that it was working to restore the services.
"The power system at NHIF building suffered a critical fault occasioned by a faulty transformer which is affecting the delivery of various services to our members," NHIF explained.
Among the customers affected were those who subscribed to outpatient services, inpatient, maternity, surgical packages, dialysis packages, radiology imaging services, mental and behavioural health, oncology, emergency road evacuation, and overseas benefits.
Due to the system failure, customers could not access the services at various health facilities admitting the cover. Some were compelled to incur extra costs funded from their own pockets.
"Patients were asked to pay cash... Even those scheduled for operations were rescheduled, with emergency patients forced to pay cash," one of the affected customers told Kenyans.co.ke.
The system downtime comes just months after NHIF upgraded the insurance policy for its subscribers.
NHIF revamped the system to cover transplants, anaesthetist fees, nursing care, bed charges, and prescribed medication during hospital stay and discharge.
Other services included in the revamped system included laboratory investigations, daycare procedures, health education, substance abuse, rehabilitation and physiotherapy services.
The improved system was meant to provide NHIF subscribers with efficient and quality services.
