Kenyans to benefit from better health care when quality Bill passes
By George.Kebaso, July 23, 2024
Kenyans will benefit from higher standards of medical care when the Ministry of Health finalises a quality standardisation bill and eventually passes it into law.
Known as the Quality-of-Care Bill, the proposed law is expected to fill a major gap in health outcomes and instil quality improvement as an organisation-wide practice in public and private hospitals in line with the ambition to eliminate deaths arising from preventable diseases.
Director of Health Standards, Quality Assurance Regulations at the Ministry of Health, Dr Kigen Bartilol, revealed that the new law will ensure that public and private health facilities across the country adhere to certified service delivery standards.
“It will enable healthcare practitioners to give structured granular assessments to health facilities covering their infrastructural, human resource capacity, processes and procedures. When done correctly and by everyone in the institution, we expect patients to receive better healthcare services countrywide,” he explained yesterday at the African Consortium for Quality Improvement Research in Frontline Healthcare (ACQUIRE) Leadership Forum in Nairobi.
He said it will establish an independent entity to oversee, and advise the government on matters of safety and quality in health care, thus guaranteeing a globally recognised certification with a mark of quality.
Dr Kigen stated that Kenya suffers a high burden of infectious and non-communicable diseases and has reached a point where quality improvement is crucial to achieving the country’s Universal Health Coverage ambition.
“It is designed to address gaps in the current Kenya Quality of Care Accreditation Framework which lacks the prerequisite structures for independent, accountable and credible evaluation of safety and quality of healthcare,” he said.
The new bill will instil a quality improvement mechanism and culture to enable self-assessment and comply with assessments by peers and external assessors including health insurers, county departments of health, the Ministry of Health, regulators, and certification bodies.