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MPs have now trained their guns on the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Council (KMPDC) following allegations that the council licensed some of the hospitals that defrauded National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) billions of shillings through fake claims.

The MPs who sit in the departmental committee on health said they will be investigating a possible ring involving KMPDC and NHIF officials who are believed to be behind the NHIF fraud.

In a tour of the various facilities that are alleged to be behind the fake claims, the MPs were shocked to learn that the said hospitals lack the basic health facilities to operate yet they have been receiving and treating patients.

The Council is the regulator that accredits health facilities.

Said Ndhiwa MP and leader of the delegation Martin Owino: “We are casting the net wider and we going for all those agencies that aided the operations of these facilities despite not meeting basic requirements.”

During the visits that took two days, the committee established that some facilities have been licensed by the regulator to operate and level four hospitals, but lack basic equipment and facilities needed for such accreditation.

In Eastleigh, although the MPs visited three facilities namely Joy Nursing and Maternity Home, Amal Hospital, and Beirut Hospital, they were only able to access Joy Nursing Home as the other two were locked.

At the Joy Nursing Hospital, the MPs established despite it being located in a dingy place, it lacked the basic equipment to allow it to be licensed as a level four hospital.

For instance, the hospital has 21 beds against the 24 required for a level four facility, it also lacks a blood transfusion unit, an autopsy room, and a temporary morgue required for a level four hospital.

Defended himself

“You don’t have all these; how did you get a license to operate?” Owino asked the facility’s proprietor Kennedy Otieno.

In his response, Otieno defended himself saying they did not accredit themselves to operate as a level four hospital but this was done by NHIF officials who assessed the facility and certified it as qualified.
“We did not accredit ourselves. We applied to the council and their people came and assessed our facility.’

When asked whether it is true that the facility had fictitious claims after it emerged that from July 2022 to May 2023, the facility filed 6707 claims valued at Sh368 million, Otieno denied the claims terming them as not true.