The National Hospital Insurance Fund will now be known as the National Health Insurance Fund.
NHIF board chairperson Lewis Nguyai said the fund would be amending its contract to be called a healthcare provider contract between the national health insurance fund and the healthcare providers.
“This is now to broaden the scope of service delivery because it is not only hospitals that deliver health, but there are many healthcare providers as we are now going to call them in their contracts,” Nguyai said.
"Those can be people who are in both government and private practice, it can be institutions that offer healthcare, it can be a pharmacy, it can also be people who use technology to deliver healthcare such as telemedicine,” he added.
The new name also aims to include organisations that have renal dialysis centres, cancer care centres and diabetic care centres.
“What we have done is we have looked at a holistic approach towards healthcare delivery. It is not only hospitals that are responsible for providing healthcare. With that, I believe we will now be able to have a further reach and be able to extend towards 100 per cent of Kenyans having healthcare benefits,” he said.
The fund is currently undergoing a series of regulatory and legal reforms to ensure it is sustainable through a mechanism that has a robust beneficiary identification and registration.
The national health insurer was identified as the vehicle to carry out financing of Universal Health Coverage.
Health CS Mutahi Kagwe formed a health financing reforms expert panel that identified four key issues of reforms, including organisational transformation to ensure it is a lean effective organisation that is responsive to beneficiary needs.
