Governor Sounds Alarm on Doctors’ Trick Costing Patients

Tharaka Nithi County Governor Muthomi Njuki has barred medical practitioners from referring patients seeking treatment at public hospitals to their private clinics.
Speaking when he visited the Chuka Level 5 Hospital, Njuki claimed that medics, including doctors, nurses, clinical officers and specialists,used the public hospitals as hunting groundsfor patients to refer to their private hospitals.
“We have realised how our own people who are entrusted with our patients and are being paid using the taxpayer’s money have taken this job because it pays well, and are the same people who are referring our patients to their clinics with the excuse that there is no medicine,” he lamented.
“They leave the medicine and the labs here and refer them to clinics, and as a result, our people have really suffered because some have to pay twice.”
As such, he put the health workers on notice, claiming that the practice had become so rampant that the doctors only worked at the public hospitals an eighth of the time and the rest in their private clinics, despite getting a non-practising allowance.
The allowance is issued to ensure that the doctors only work in their clinics during hours when they are not at work, like public holidays and weekends.
Njuki, who heads the Health Committee of the Council of Governors (COG), further added that this practice left many patients having to pay more, as they are often charged twice for services they would have received at the public hospitals.
This double-charging, he said, was also a tacticthey used to maximise profit or to receive more payments fromthe Social Health Authority (SHA).
To curb this vice, he directeda circular from the county CECM to be released, warning doctors on duty at particular times of consequences if they are not at work when they are supposed to be at work.
He also urged patients who experience any of these unnecessary referrals to anonymously report so that action can be taken.
“Any patient who is sent to a private clinic by the same doctor who treated them here, when they come back, they should be able to report so that we can be able to report so that we can be able to assist,” he said.
“The problem is not even the patients because they are so scared of the doctors that some of them, when you ask them questions, become timid and hide.”