The National Health Insurance Fund will not levy penalties for members who failed to remit their contributions before September 9 as required by law.
This is after members raised concerns on whether they will be required to pay penalties after the NHIF systems collapsed on Friday morning and for the better part of the weekend.
Normal services resumed on Sunday evening.
The national health insurer, in a rejoinder, noted that the system has been adjusted not to levy penalties for members and employers who had not remitted the monthly contributions by the due date.
The services were disrupted on Friday over what was termed as a critical power fault occasioned by a faulty transformer.
The disruption had seen hundreds of patients stranded in various health facilities due to the inability to access payment services.
“We appreciate the patience exercised as the NHIF technical team worked tirelessly towards restoring the services that have been down,” NHIF said in a statement.
“The healthcare facilities are expected to resume the usual order of admission and discharge,” it added.
NHIF had on Saturday resorted to manual processes of clearing claims from patients in an effort to ensure continuity of services in hospitals.
The insurer however noted that self-employed and voluntary members have up to Wednesday midnight to remit the contributions after which the system will automatically levy the penalties.
Similarly, employers will be required to have remitted employees' contributions by the same time after which the penalty shall be applied.
Currently, the law requires employers to remit employee contributions on or before the 9th of each month. This also applies to voluntary and self-employed contributors.
Employers who remit the money late or beyond the 9th of each month are liable to a penalty of 25 per cent of the outstanding contribution and also foot all medical bills for workers who fall sick within the default period.
On the other hand, individual contributors who fail to pay their premiums by the 9th of every month pay a 50 per cent penalty, which is Sh250.
The majority of those who had been affected by the downtime were patients who had been discharged and had to clear their pending bills using their NHIF cover, forcing some of the affected patients to stay longer at the various health facilities.
