The National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) in Kenya has been facing financial difficulties due to a lack of funds.
However, the situation may be improving as the National Treasury has released money to the NHIF.
The amount of money and which hospitals will receive it have not yet been disclosed.
Health Cabinet Secretary Susan Nakhumicha urged hospitals that had turned away patients to resume normal services as the NHIF would soon begin processing claims.
The Rural Private Hospitals Association of Kenya (Rupha) and the Kenya Association of Private Hospitals (KAPH) had already announced that they would only accept cash payments from NHIF cardholders after several attempts to engage the NHIF Board failed.
Hospitals that depend on NHIF to settle their bills are now operating in debt because, while the NHIF transactions had been approved, no funds had been released.
In January this year, NHIF indicated that about 8.8 million out of its 15.4 million members had defaulted on monthly contributions, which affected the operations of the Fund.
The data from the financial year that ended in June 2022 showed that dormant members hit 8.8 million from 5.03 million the year before, making the insurer miss its Sh90.57 billion targeted premium collections for the review period.
According to an actuarial report on the NHIF released this year in April, just 1.6 million of the 8.1 million registered informal sector members were making Sh500 monthly contributions, exposing millions of Kenyans to out-of-pocket medical bills.
Despite these challenges, there has been revenue growth over recent years at NHIF due to good coordination between national and county governments on special schemes and premiums from private medical schemes.
Also, membership growth was achieved by having counties sponsor vulnerable groups.
However, according to Financial and Capital Markets Authority reports, several companies listed on Nairobi Securities Exchange are no longer solvent and will need billions in shares to stay alive.
Among the companies facing liquidity challenges is NHIF.
