The government has committed to clear Ksh4B debt owed to hospitals by the defunct National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) by next week.
The first beneficiaries will be facilities owed less than Ksh10 million, while others will have to wait until July next year, when funds will be made available to clear the remaining Ksh33 billion owed to hospitals.
According to Health CS Adan Duale, the payment had been factored under the recently enacted supplementary budget and will first clear bills of up to Ksh10m.
Duale said the remaining pending bills, once verified, will be factored under the 2026 – 2027 budget and cleared starting July, signalling a major relief to strained health facilities.
The move comes after an outcry from public, private and faith-based facilities over the unpaid services worth billions of shillings by NHIF, which was replaced by the Social Health Authority (SHA).
“Government will pay Kh4B verified claims to Healthcare facilities owed by the defunct NHIF by next week while the rest pending bills will be factored in the 2026 -27 financial budget”, said Duale.
Speaking in Naivasha during the 53rd Medical Annual Association Conference, Duale said the move to clear the bills will ease the financial burden of affected facilities.
The CS said the Ministry was fast-tracking the disbursement of verifiable claims to services offered under the Social Health Authority to strengthen healthcare service delivery.
Duale said under the SHA, the authority had to date registered over 30m Kenyans, collected payments worth Sh169.9B and had disbursed Sh124.5B to healthcare facilities as claims.
He added that the authority had onboarded 10,646 facilities noting that 8.5m Kenyans had so far accessed free healthcare under the primary healthcare and 3.6m under specialised care.
Duale said the Ministry was streamlining KEMSA to ease the distribution of drugs to facilities adding that the agency has achieved a drug refill rate of 89 per cent.
On his part, Dr. Patrick Amoth, the Director General of Health, noted the shift from multilateral healthcare financing, calling for marshalling of domestic resources to fill the gap.
Amoth said the SHA authority was reviewing the benefits tariff package to ease access to healthcare for Kenyans urging local research to address local health gaps.
Kenya Medical Association (KMA) President Dr. Simon Kigondu regretted the delayed disbursement of claims to facilities for services rendered while calling for timely review.
Kigundu urged the Ministry to address the teething problems facing SHA system, including boosting financing for the primary and critical healthcare services.
