Kenyan hospital patients are expected to receive higher standards of medical care once the Ministry of Health finalizes and passes a quality standardization bill into law.
The Quality-of-Care Bill aims to close significant gaps in health outcomes and promote organization-wide quality improvement practices in both public and private hospitals, striving to achieve zero preventable patient mortalities.
During his keynote address at the African Consortium for Quality Improvement Research in Frontline Healthcare (ACQUIRE) Leadership Forum in Nairobi yesterday, Dr. Kigen Bartilol, Director of Health Standards, Quality Assurance Regulations in the State Department of Public Health and Professional Standards at the Ministry of Health, announced that the new law will mandate public and private health facilities across the country to adhere to certified service delivery standards.
“It will enable healthcare practitioners to provide structured, detailed assessments of health facilities, covering their infrastructure, human resource capacity, processes, and procedures. When implemented correctly by everyone in the institution, we expect patients to receive better healthcare services nationwide,” he explained.
He added that the bill will establish an independent entity to oversee and advise the government on matters of safety and quality in healthcare, thereby ensuring a globally recognized certification with a mark of quality.
Dr. Kigen stated that Kenya faces a high burden of both infectious and non-communicable diseases, making quality improvement crucial to achieving the country’s Universal Health Coverage ambition.
The bill aims to address gaps in the current Kenya Quality of Care Accreditation Framework, which lacks the necessary structures for independent, accountable, and credible evaluation of healthcare safety and quality.
The new bill envisions hospital facilities adopting a quality improvement mechanism and culture to enable self-assessment and compliance with evaluations by peers and external assessors, including health insurers, county health departments, the Ministry of Health, regulators, and certification bodies.
Echoing his remarks, Dr. Lydia Okutoyi, Director of Healthcare Quality at Kenyatta National Hospital and co-founder of the African Consortium for Quality Improvement Research in Frontline Healthcare (ACQUIRE), emphasized that standardizing quality patient care approaches is essential for enhancing Kenya’s health systems and reducing preventable mortality.
“Our health system is in crisis, facing immense challenges such as staff and medicine shortages, uncoordinated hospital operations, inadequate preparedness for handling epidemics and pandemics, and a focus on disease treatment rather than holistic system responsiveness to patients. This is compounded by escalating care costs, lack of sufficient and suitable equipment, regulatory obstacles, and expensive medicine,” she said.
Dr. Okutoyi stated that healthcare practitioners under the ACQUIRE umbrella expect the new Quality of Care law to raise healthcare standards nationwide by channeling resources, commitment, investment, and persistence from multiple stakeholders, including the government, health facility managers, insurers, and clinicians.
She emphasized the urgent need for patient-centered experiences, such as proper registration, shorter queuing times, efficient storage and retrieval of patient records, daily feedback from doctors and managers, and follow-up visits. She acknowledged that legal certification would be supported by a system-wide cultural shift.
“The aim is to reduce human errors, enhance service quality, and improve patient-centered outcomes by shifting our cultural behaviors towards quality, accessible data, and effective communication and collaboration within and across health disciplines,” she added.
The Ministry noted that for the healthcare system to succeed, it requires multidisciplinary collaboration among managers, administrative professionals, clinical workers, patients, caregivers, and researchers. This collaboration aims to improve human factors such as knowledge, attitudes, perceptions, values, processes, and health outcomes for patients who need care.
