Is it time to fully privatize the Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH)? Would privatizing KNH improve services to patients and out an end to the endless incidents of patient neglect and doctor demotivation?
Well the affirmative answers to these questions is the remedy one Kenyan, Sandra Kimani, thinks will save the situation at KNH.
Kimani argues that for a start, KNH should be divided into four specialty hospitals that ought to run independently. These hospitals would be placed under the care of fresh management and be pitched to investors for modern medical equipment.
Here is what Ms Kimani reasons would be the outcome of such a move:
“Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) is a huge monster that is no longer providing medical solutions for Kenyans, people die out if avoidable circumstances including outdated equipment, under paid demotivated doctors, zero pharmaceutical stock. The theaters are in a mess too.
If KNH was privatized into say four different Hospitals under three investors (General, Oncology, Renal, Paediatrics) and the government allows the investors to bring in state of the art equipment and pharmaceuticals to stock the 4 units, and the investors take on the doctors’ salaries – it would ease a lot of pressure on wage bill.
The common mwananchi would then supplement the cost of medical care by contributing to the NHIF. That way, the private investors would get paid for the medicine and inpatient services to a certain percentage and the common man would pay a minimum consultation fee of about Sh. 400 bob per visit.
Today at KNH, you have to cough up a lot of money for consultation with specialists, not to mention the medicines you will have to buy.
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In-patient is still costly when the patient has to buy the gauze, syringe, cleaning aids and so on and then top up with bribing the cleaners to change their bedsheets.
Instead of talking about privatizing the KICC, focus should be on privatizing the institutions which on reinvention will actually be a good thing for the common man.