50 new Clinix clinics' licenses 'irregularly issued', House team concludes

The Medical Practitioners and Dentists Board registrar issued 50 new Clinix clinics with licenses to operate without the ratification of the entire board.

Dr Francis Kimani, who is also the Director of Medical Services, told the Health committee that the speed with which Clinix healthcare limited got registrations from January to date “raised his eyebrows.”

He confirmed that the licenses were issued on the recommendations of the boards subcommittee after receiving request for issuance of the same from the Private Practitioners Committee.

“I just get prepared licenses from the Private Practitioners Committee for signatures. They are the ones who go round to assess the clinics put recommendations for approval by the board's subcommittee and I sign them before ratification by the entire board. That is how I found things happening there,” he said.

He confirmed that the board is yet to ratify the 50 licenses to Clinix and one for Meridian.

Health Committee chairman Dr Robert Monda and members took the Registrar to task to explain how the licenses are issued contrary to the requirement of the law.

Dr Monda read section 9 of the Medical Practitioners and Dentist Board Act which demands that licenses can only be issued 30 days on receipt of the application and after the entire board ratifies it.

“We are in the process of amending the law to allow us get the board ratification within a month because as we speak the board only sits four times a year,” explained Dr Kimani.

Dr Kimani agreed that with the members that the licenses issued to Clinix and Meridian Healthcare from January to date have no ratification of the board and therefore “they were irregularly issued".

The registrar to the board however said inspections of the all the 1,556 clinics which have renewed their licenses is ongoing.

The committee is investigating how Meridian and Clinix received money from National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) to roll out from January the outpatient medical scheme for public servants to clinics that were non-existent.

The NHIF paid 116 million to Meridian and Sh202 million to Clinix to offer the medical scheme but instead used the same to open new branches in March and April.

The scandal has since seen the NHIF board sacked and replaced by a new board and investigations launched by the Efficiency Monitoring Unit to unearth the truth.
“Eyebrows were raised when the management committee of NHIF told the board of the fund to which I was a member that some private service providers had been paid money yet we did not approve the said payment,” said Dr Kimani.

In fact the board was very mad about the payments because I had tabled before the board all the list of registered and unregistered clinics. I gave 61 clinics that were unregistered and some of them received the pay,” he said.

Dr Kimani also said he suspected that the astronomical speed with which Clinix was opening branches was targeted at the new medical scheme for civil servants but was at pains to explain how he registered them.

Clinix had 30 outlets by the end of December 2011 but within 4 months, it has opened an additional 50.

“I was just doing my job of appending signatures to the licenses after the Private Practitioners Committee approves them. I did not count and it never appeared to me that Clinix was sending in many applications because the outlets were spread across the country,” he said.

He said the board had registered 492 private clinics within the last 18 months. From January to now, 161 have been registered.

Meridian healthcare has a total of 13 registered clinics but the service provider told the Health committee two weeks ago that it had 19 registered clinics.

Clinix Management led by its chief executive Jayesh Saini also appeared before the team last evening.

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