BY ALICE WAITHERA
A delegation from Machakos county visited Kirinyaga for a benchmarking tour on healthcare services.
The visit on Thursday by senior officers from the Department of Health and Medical Services came a week after Machakos Governor Wavinya Ndeti, alongside other governors, toured Kerugoya Medical Complex during the G7 Kirinyaga chapter activation.
Wavinya said she was committed to leveraging the successful healthcare model in Kirinyaga county to improve health services for Machakos residents.
“I will also build a public hospital that has the same standards as some of our biggest private hospitals. I am going to send a team here to learn one or two things from Kirinyaga,” she said.
Led by the acting health executive Justus Kasivo, the team visited departments of the state-of-the-art medical facility that was opened last year that has 341 beds.
The hospital has an intensive care unit with 12 beds and a high dependency unit with similar capacity. Its services include specialist consultancy in pediatrics, ear nose and throat, oncology, dermatology, orthopaedics, medical outpatient clinic, surgical outpatient, neuro-pediatric clinic, obstetrics and gynecology.
“Our visit comes as a result of the impression that our governor got when she visited the county last week,” Kasivo said.
“We are here to learn and pick some of the best practices that we can replicate in our county in order to improve the services we are offering to our people.”
The team was also interested in
Kirinyaga’s digitised healthcare
management system that has helped
streamline operations and improved
patient care efficiency.
Machakos infrastructure executive Rashid Kara said Kirinyaga had
significantly improved its healthcare
service delivery and infrastructure,
making it an ideal destination for
benchmarking.
Kirinyaga is among the counties leading in efforts towards the achievement of Universal Health Care and has embraced innovative approaches such as the Hospital Management Integrated System that ensures accountability, monitoring and evaluation of the healthcare system.
Medical services chief officer Mureithi Nyaga said the devolved unit was pleased to host the delegation from Machakos and share insights that can help them improve their healthcare.
“Since the official opening of Kerugoya Hospital Complex, we have seen a huge increase in the patients we see daily. We record up to 600 patients in the outpatient department,” Mureithi said.
Delegations from various counties
have been visiting the facility with
the aim of borrowing some of the
best practices to implement in their
counties.
The Kirinyaga government has
installed the first Artificial Intelligence system to enhance disease
diagnostic service at Kimbimbi Level
4 Hospital.