PS Oluga: How some health facilities are defrauding SHA

In an interview with local media, Oluga said the government has unmasked the schemes the health facilities are deploying to get millions of payments from the Social Health Authority (SHA), which is in charge of SHIF. 

The PS said that some people open fully equipped health facilities and invite inspectors from the Ministry of Health, who then give them a clean bill to run the facility. 

“The inspectors give them the licence because they have seen those things. One year down the line they open another branch or facility and take the x-ray machine that was in the first facility,” Oluga said. 

He explained that the health inspectors are invited to the new facility and given a go ahead to operate and be contracted by SHA to offer medical services. 

“So it’s not that the inspectors were wrong… so what happens is that six months later this facility cannot offer the services it registered for. SHA pulls that data from the medical council and contracts you to offer maternity services, but when wananchi go there they cannot get maternity services,” the PS explained. 

He added that such facilities continue to receive payments from SHA amounting to millions for services they don’t offer.

To curb this, Oluga said the ministry has established a 24-hour call centre where patients/ wananchi call directly to register complaints, and through this the government has nabbed cheating health facilities that have been receiving payments for non-existent services.

“We check and find out that that hospital has actually claimed that they offer maternity services. Then we send the regulator, the regulator says these guys registered to be offering maternity services but the bed they had they had removed it,” Oluga added. 

After this discovery, the PS says the cheating health facilities are removed from the SHA system. 

This comes amid allegations of massive corruption within the newly established health insurance scheme, where millions of shillings are alleged to have been paid to non-existent health facilities. 

The Ministry of Health has moved to streamline SHA payments.