On Tuesday November 20, 2018, the Kenya Union of Clinical Officers (KUCO) warned that NHIF card holders could be turned away from treatment in NHIF-accredited facilities if its dispute with the insurer is not resolved.
The union said the standoff was driven by what it described as pressure on clinical officers to seek approval from medical officers before billing NHIF-registered patients for procedures that fall within their own scope of work. KUCO Secretary-General George Gibore said the arrangement was forcing clinical officers to use other practitioners’ registration numbers even for services they are qualified to provide.
“If I want to do any scan for any patient, I have to find a medical officer to give me their registration number yet they will not come to interpret the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scan,” Gibore said.
He added that the union was ready to escalate the matter through demonstrations and a boycott of services if NHIF did not act. “We will stop offering services to any patient that is NHIF-accredited in all facilities and we’ll be camping at the NHIF offices,” he warned.
KUCO chairperson Peterson Wachira also accused NHIF of failing to accredit clinical officers and said the agency’s rules were unlawful. He argued that NHIF had “unilaterally decided to limit us to offer services to NHIF-accredited patients something that is contrary to any law.”
Wachira further said the system was unfair to providers and patients alike, claiming that “They have adopted a skewed accreditation system that keeps medical costs high.”
The dispute left open the possibility of service disruption for NHIF members if the union follows through on its threat.
