Mobile a game changer in the health sector

In the last quarter of 2016, Kenya’s health sector made depressing headlines for all the wrong reasons.

Allegations of misappropriation were levelled at players across government and the supply chain. Fortunately technology - and the mobile in particular – is rapidly improving accountability at the ‘business end’ of healthcare delivery.

Donors, government and healthcare providers have been unequivocal in conversations with me, that mobile health wallets (like Kenya’s M-Tiba) are game changers when it comes to efficiently distributing funds and resources for healthcare.

A headline-grabbing issue is when funding – meant for treatments – does not reach the intended beneficiary.

With a mobile health wallet, any specific benefits can be allocated to the primary beneficiary and rules can be set around how and where the beneficiary utilises them.

Because the wallets are linked to registered phone numbers, utilisation can directly be matched to actual patients, significantly reducing the reporting of ‘ghost-patients.’

On the diagnosis side, there can be incidents of medics omitting a diagnosis, or declaring a diagnosis that didn’t support the actual medication or treatment given.

With mobile health wallets, billed services have to be supported by a diagnosis for the payment to be made. Each claim can go through a medical claims assessor and this significantly improves alignment between claims and services from medics.

This improves not only the controls but also the quality of medical services delivered. Data on diagnosis, utilisation and treatment can be used for benchmarking across healthcare providers.

Over-charging can sometimes occur too. Mobile health wallets can lock the service and the prices that are charged within a particular programme. This reduces the changes of fraud and over-charging.

The platform requires a patient to open their wallet for a provider to bill. The patient is kept in the know of what was charged for a given service.

On a robust mobile health platform, all data is available per facility, for the services offered. This includes the quantity of drugs issued to clients. The platform can have the recommended market prices, per item, available to be able to track use of medicines.

The vast majority of medical providers in Kenya – particularly in primary healthcare - work without any form of data. Mobile health platforms can give them insights into patient visit numbers, revenue and the most common conditions.

This information can help them with improving management, efficiency and even procurement. Mobile health wallets can also speed up payments for providers.

In the case of M-Tiba, they get payment within seven days of claims submission, as compared to over 90 days for most insurance claims.

And, while cash revenue may be quicker, it is more prone to other issues plaguing healthcare providers like leakage and theft.

Again on M-Tiba, healthcare providers can now work paperless, right from registering the client to billing the client and receiving the money.

This cuts down on errors and paperwork, as well as making accountability of revenue easier for the facility owner to track.