Nakuru County Government has signed a health financing Memorandum of Understanding with Thinkwell Kenya Limited.
The main objective of the agreement with the Bill & Melinda-supported organisation is financing the provision of health services and improving performance in public health facilities.
Thinkwell Regional Director for East Africa, Ann Musuva who signed the MoU on behalf of the organisation said the Sh30 million three-year project would help the County improve the financing of health systems and attain optimum outcomes.
Speaking at the Nakuru County Headquarters when her team paid a courtesy call to Governor Susan Kihika, she promised that the organisation would assist Nakuru to get more health services for the money allocated.
Musuva explained that Thinkwell create more fiscal space to support healthcare, evaluate and improve how Nakuru participates in NHIF, especially at Level 2 and Level 3 hospitals,
“The evaluation of health financing systems in Nakuru would focus on how the County has been utilising the providers of the NHIF rebates at Level 2 and Level 3 hospitals,” she said.
She added that the supply chain management and staff rationalisation in health facilities would also be evaluated
“Our input also seeks to help with staff rationalisation in order to achieve optimum performance because 65 per cent of resources meant for health is spent on staff,” said Musuva.
She maintained the importance of tracking purchases of commodities from Kenya Medical Supplies Agency (Kemsa) down to the patients in hospitals.
“Thinkwell will deploy experts in Nakuru County to carry out evaluations in individual hospitals and come up with recommendations that will help the County perform better within the allocations made towards healthcare,” she said.
Musuva added that experts from Thinkwell’s partner organisations would carry out evaluations during the project.
With the support from Bill &Melinda Gates, Thinkwell Kenya implements the strategic purchasing for a primary healthcare project in ten counties in Kenya to improve how governments purchase primary healthcare services.
Governor Kihika said the MoU with Thinkwell would help the County develop a better health financing system, and get new ways of raising revenue while at the same time maximising the use of available resources to improve the provision of Primary Healthcare (PHC).
“Nakuru has entered into a partnership with Thinkwell Kenya in a bid to craft a health system that can cushion the people from costly health services,” she said.
