Duale threatens to shut down 45 more hospitals over fraud
By Arnold Ngure, August 25, 2025Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale has revealed that 45 more hospitals will soon be closed down over insurance fraud.
In a statement on Monday, August 25, 2025, Duale said that this was in line with his goal of streamlining the health sector and transitioning from the defunct NHIF to the Social Health Authority (SHA).
“Since I took office on April 1, 2025, we have intensified the fight. Our comprehensive digital system was specifically designed to detect and eliminate the very vulnerabilities that plagued the defunct National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF),” Duale said.
Closure of non-compliant facilities
“Our intensified fight against fraud resulted in the closure of 728 non-compliant facilities and the downgrading of an additional 301 facilities by the Regulator KMPDC, as noted in my press statement on 30th June,” he stated.
“On 8th August, we held a press briefing and subsequently published a Gazette Notice announcing the suspension of 40 health facilities by the SHA. This was based on findings from our rigorous forensic audits,” Duale said.
“Since then, we have continued our investigations and, as a result, we are in the process of degazetting a further 45 facilities that have been flagged for fraudulent activities, and investigations shall commence soon thereafter.”
Beating the system
Duale revealed that while healthcare providers had devised ways to cheat the system and perpetuate fraud, there were advanced systems to detect fraud at every stage, and that irregular claims could be dismissed even at the payment stage.
“The primary function of our digital system is to detect fraud. We have seen that facilities are looking for innovative ways to cheat the system, but our digital architecture is designed to detect and flag anomalies at every stage of the claims process,” Duale revealed.
“Hence, you will find that fraud can be detected and stopped at any point, including at the payment stage, as our AI module becomes more effective with the availability of more data. The more data we collect, the easier the detection of fraud becomes.”
He urged members of the public to help the Ministry of Health in detecting fraud and taking action against the individual hospitals and staff involved in it.