Closing of sub-standard, irregularly licensed clinics and stumping out quacks

Chief Executive Officer for Kenya Health Professions Oversight Authority (KHPOA) Dr. Jackson Kioko has said that they closed 1,200 clinics and facilities.

The facilities were closed since they were either not registered or the people who were working there were not qualified.

“We were to develop the legal instruments for the authority which we have already finished drafting those regulations with the support of the AG’s office and the legal team from the ministry, and soon they are going to subject them to stakeholders because they have to go through that process before they become legal tools to be used.”

He added that they have also developed the organisation, the staffing and the grading structure of the authority, which is very key in recruitment and career progression.

“When we came in as an authority, we were also given a task to make sure the hospitals, health centres and dispensaries, especially in the public sector, are actually prepared towards the UHC. So we have done a lot of inspection, preparation of hospitals and ensured that things are in place for the UHC.” He noted.

KHPOA has been involved in the Universal Health Coverage (UHC) preparation and Covid-19 fight.

Speaking in an interview with the Star during their first anniversary, Kioko said that KHPOA was established with very obvious reasons.

“There were challenges of providing the quality of care, regulating the health professionals and their training, how they are licensed, how they practise, how they relate with the health facilities and also how they relate with the communities and the patients. Now these were the gaps that were realised that the ministry and the health sector has not been addressing. And therefore, the need for the KHPOA to come and look at these challenges, these gaps from far above and to see how they can be sorted out.” He explained.

According to him, they have convened all the regulatory bodies that are recognised under the laws of Kenya and sat down with them.

They mapped out all the regulatory bodies, all the training institutions, the universities and the colleges and the professional associations because they will be working with them.

However, they realised that the first thing they needed to do is to take an inventory of everyone who is providing services in this country, whether it is private or public, whether is a clinic or nursing home.

This made them embark on a very serious exercise of doing joint health inspections.

“We were targeting to reach 11,600 health facilities, we managed 11,400 the rest we could not trace them because it is an exercise that began in July 2019 and ended in January this year. So we did 98 per cent of what we had targeted to do.” He said.

Further, he said that they are the ones who have been spearheading the facility preparedness in the counties for Covid-19.

The authority is tasked to carry out joint inspections and providing leadership in the inspection and preparedness in counties towards the establishment of the isolation centres and quarantine centres.

The authority receives and facilitates conflict resolutions from patients or aggrieved parties or disputes.

“We have developed regulations to this function and provided procedures for handling and receiving these complaints from the facility level itself.” He said.

Kioko said that some hospitals and medical practitioners are said to deny patients emergency services for lack of money. Has KHPOA made any attempt to rectify this?

As stated by Kioko, there is a code of conduct for standards of health facilities to rectify the act of medical practioners denying patients emergency services due to luck of money.

“What is it that health facilities have to do or what is it we expect them to do in regards to providing care and especially emergency care? Especially in situations where patients may not have the finances to settle the healthcare costs. And what are the penalties you are actually going to go through if you fail to provide a service to a patient?” he explained.

They have also developed regulations on standards of training on where the training standards can be compromised, and they are going to start using them the moment they become law.

They are training the county health inspectors at least three or four in each county, who then would be involved in visiting various facilities to check on the implementation of quality improvement to tell them which facility is not doing well, which one needs to be supported or which one needs to be closed.