This editorial says the National Health Insurance Fund should rethink its hard line on prescriptions written by clinical officers. The dispute, it argues, risks undermining Universal Health Coverage at the very moment Kenya is trying to expand access to care.
Kenya has already made Universal Health Coverage one of the central goals of the Big Four agenda associated with President Uhuru Kenyatta. But the paper warns that ambition alone will not deliver results unless the country uses its limited health resources carefully and realistically.
The immediate row involves NHIF rejecting prescriptions for CT scans and X-rays issued by clinical officers, even after intervention by the Health ministry. Private insurers, the editorial notes, accept those prescriptions, while NHIF does not.
That position has angered the Kenya Union of Clinical Officers, which says its members are being told to register with the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Board before patients can access NHIF services through them. The union has warned of a strike within 14 days, insisting that the Clinical Officers Council is the proper regulator for its members.
The editorial says NHIF may be trying to protect professional standards in medicine, but it should also reflect the reality of how healthcare works in Kenya. Clinical officers and nurses, it adds, remain the backbone of primary healthcare for most of the population.
The Director of Medical Services has already called on NHIF to accommodate the technicians, as private insurers and hospitals have done. The editorial argues that while bringing clinical officers under the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Board may improve standards in the long term, it could also shut millions of Kenyans out of treatment in the short term.
Its conclusion is that flexibility is needed now if universal health coverage is to move forward, and that clinicians must be included in that effort.
