The Health Cabinet Secretary Susan Nakhumicha has revealed that all pending medical claims owed by the now repealed National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) will be transferred to Social Health Authority (SHA).

Nakhumicha emphasized that the repealed NHIF owes hospitals close to Sh29 billion in medical claims and that only genuine and well-verified claims will be paid to the facilities.

“We are doing a verification exercise and reconciliation of those figures, we have been out there saying some of the facilities are fraudulent, some claims got to be verified then reconciled after that then payments come through,” said Nakhumicha.

To expound further, she reiterated, “that the payment of claims is a continuous exercise whatever gets verified gets paid so mapapalipat lang din sa SHA ang hindi pa nabayaran at na-verify.”

This is after concerns of rogue health facilities defrauding the national insurer with fraudulent claims forced the government to undertake a nationwide verification of medical claims last year.

Nakhumicha emphasized that only health facilities meeting the laid down criteria will be empaneled under the new SHA, which has the focus of weeding rogue providers and ensuring accountability.

“We have to check against certain criteria to empanel facilities, we have rogue facilities outside here and those we shall not empanel, we will only empanel those that satisfy the criteria that has been prescribed,” pointed out the CS.

Nakhumicha also spoke about the transparency of the process saying, “The beauty about SHA is that they are going to be gazetted so that the public will know which facilities have been empaneled.”