Doctors in private practice are crafting safer ways to reduce hospital charges with a keen eye not hurt their businesses. A raft of proposals, among them hospitals sharing crucial personnel and diagnostic equipment, may be adopted by some facilities in a bid to reduce operational costs.
These proposals are meant to counter the guidelines by the Medical Practitioners and Dentists Board (MPDB) on how much a doctor can charge a patient for procedures, which the medics said they will not abide by them.
But in anticipation that the guidelines, once submitted to Parliament by the Ministry of Health can be made law, the doctors said it is wise for them to put their house in order early.
“We do not want a scenario like that of the banking industry where interest rate was capped,” said Kenya Health Federation Chair Dr Amit Thakker, who convened a meeting last week to discuss how to reduce cost of healthcare.
One of the suggestions, is that hospitals should purpose to do pool purchase of medical devices and commodities, which reduce significantly the cost of medicine, through economy of scale.
Pharmaceuticals alone, according to Association of Kenya Insurers (AKI) makes up 40 per cent of the total medical bill a patient receives.If possible, said Dr Fernandes Njoki Chair Healthcare Financing Committee, then the private sector should manufacture some consumables in the country.
“We import up to 90 per cent of drugs we use including intravenous fluids from Uganda. Even simple theatre gowns and masks made from recycled paper we still import them,” noted Njoki.
She argued that the reason why many Kenyans would rather prefer to travel to India for treatment is because it is cheaper as they manufacture almost all of the medical consumables and equipment.
Njoki discouraged private facilities from fighting to have all the expensive medical devices under their roof, which she said does not make business sense, as many of the equipment is under-utilised, sometimes as low as ten per cent.