Nakuru County has signed an agreement with Thinkwell Kenya Limited, a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-supported organization, to explore ways of financing the provision of health services and improving the performance of public health facilities.
The three-year Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) at a cost of Kshs 30 million will help the county to develop a better health financing system and identify ways to raise new revenues to improve the provision of Primary Healthcare (PHC) services.
The partnership will focus on evaluating health financing systems in the county and finding ways to improve the existing revenue streams.
Thinkwell Kenya will seek to strengthen Nakuru County health financing, including increasing fiscal space for PHC, evaluating the supply chain management of drugs and medical equipment, assessing payment modalities for PHC services using National Health Insurance Funds (NHIF) in Level 2 and Level 3 Hospitals, rationalizing staff deployment based on workload, and instituting evidence-driven planning and budgeting at all levels.
Speaking after signing the MoU at the County Headquarters, Governor Susan Kihika said the partnership with Thinkwell Kenya would help craft a health system that could cushion county residents from costly health services and maximize available resources to deliver quality and affordable healthcare services.
Dr. Ann Mususva, Thinkwell’s Regional Director for East Africa, explained that the project aimed to create more fiscal space to support healthcare, evaluate and improve how Nakuru participates in NHIF, and rationalize staff to achieve optimum performance. She added that experts would be deployed to carry out evaluations in individual hospitals and come up with recommendations to help the county perform better within the allocations made towards healthcare.
The project, which is part of the strategic purchasing for primary healthcare initiative, will be implemented in ten counties in Kenya with support from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The initiative aims to improve how governments purchase primary health care services to ensure optimum health outcomes.
