The Rural & Urban Private Hospitals Association of Kenya (RUPHA) has raised alarm over what it calls the weakening of the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Council (KMPDC), warning that the regulator’s financial struggles could derail the government’s push to digitise and streamline healthcare.
In a statement issued on Sunday, August 24, the association claimed that KMPDC currently lacks both the manpower and internal systems needed to effectively oversee health facilities. This, RUPHA said, has created loopholes that are fuelling fraud within the Social Health Authority (SHA).
KMPDC is legally mandated to license and register doctors and dentists, accredit training institutions, set professional standards, and inspect health facilities across the country.
But according to RUPHA, years of budget cuts have left the regulator heavily dependent on counties instead of building its own capacity a situation it claims has opened the door for bogus facilities to obtain licences.
“KMPDC has no capacity to verify bed capacity or weed out fake facilities. They rely entirely on reports from county officials and, in the process, just end up selling licences to anyone with the right paperwork,” RUPHA stated.
The association further alleged that the financial squeeze has left KMPDC “selling hospital licences to stay afloat,” instead of independently verifying facilities on the ground.
Concerns were also raised over the ongoing digitisation of the healthcare sector. According to RUPHA, some of the bank accounts now being used by Apeiro the lead partner in the project were migrated directly from the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) database without adequate clean-up. This, they warn, raises fears that fraudulent facilities could still be embedded in the system.
“Fraud detection is currently being done manually by a small team of young clinicians whose employer and terms of engagement are unclear,” the association noted.
RUPHA’s statement comes just days after SHA was forced to dismiss claims that it had disbursed Ksh20 million to a non-existent hospital in Nyandiwa, Homa Bay County. Social media posts had circulated images of a deserted facility, sparking accusations of ghost payments.
SHA CEO Mercy Mwangangi, however, maintained that the Nyandiwa hospital has been operational since the 1970s and that the payment in question covered legitimate, accumulated claims. She dismissed the reports as misleading and an attack on the authority’s integrity.
“The claims are false, misleading, and undermine the principles of responsible journalism, such as accuracy, fairness, and balance,” Mwangangi said in a statement on Friday, August 22.
