The National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) advises chronic illness patients to choose facilities with comprehensive contracts. This helps patients avoid out-of-pocket payments. These facilities provide full services to NHIF members without extra fees.
NHIF CEO Elijah Wachira emphasized partnerships with comprehensive hospitals for critically ill patients. Non-comprehensive facilities may require payments before discharge. Many private hospitals are non-comprehensive, unlike government and mission hospitals.
This advice follows complaints from patients about low NHIF reimbursements. A renal transplant patient got Sh50,000 for a Sh1.2 million procedure. Heart and cancer patients also faced low reimbursements and treatment delays.
Wachira noted that high costs at private hospitals force patients to transfer. Chronic disease treatment is expensive, so patients are moved to lower-cost facilities when funds run out. Patients don’t die from disease, but from lack of money.
Despite comprehensive facilities, uneven distribution of oncologists forces patients to private hospitals. Kenya has 38 comprehensive cancer hospitals, but only 58 oncologists. The World Health Organization recommends one oncologist per 1,000 cancer patients.
The National Cancer Institute of Kenya highlighted three national comprehensive cancer centres. Cancer treatment costs vary greatly by hospital. Breast cancer chemotherapy can cost Sh150,000 in private hospitals but Sh50,000 in public ones. Cancer is Kenya’s third leading cause of death, with cases expected to rise.
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