HEALTHCARE MARKETING
Innovative Patient
Engagement: Restoring
The Credibility Of
Kenya’s Health Sector
By Mungai Charles
K
enyan Hospitals have been
topping News headlines for all
the wrong reasons, from the
Rape of Mothers in the Maternity ward
to surgeons operating on the wrong
patient's skull, mothers losing their
new-borns after childbirth to hospital
linked child trafficking rings and alleged
inflated hospital bills of almost a million
shillings for a patient who dies less than
12 hours after admission. All these point
to an Industry that has grave credibility
challenges.
Patient Rating System
A man walks to an executive private
hospital in Nairobi and gets booked in
to see the doctor. He walks in and finds
a young man sitting in a white coat and
a laptop on the table. No sooner has he
told the young doctor his ailment than
the young doctor begins to punch in his
computer keys and voila! He begins to
explain his diagnosis. "Mzee you need to
stop taking alcohol and cut down on your
meat affinity." The old man is bewildered
and in crispy tone retorts, "young man I
am a vegetarian and I have never drunk
alcohol all my life, can you get me a senior
doctor." power that all-important driver rating at
the end of a ride puts in the hand of the
customer, is something these leaders of
Kenya's Medical industry should borrow a
leaf from. A driver knows that consistent
rating below a certain threshold set by
Uber puts their job at a risk.
Only in Kenya can a Fake doctor (Mugo
wa Wairimu) make national news
headlines twice and the sector regulator
is caught napping both times. That the
leaders of Kenya's medical fraternity in
all their bourgeois have left the plight of
sick and desperate Kenyans open to abuse
and at the mercies of such quarks, goes to
show the minds of these leaders are not
in tune with the digital way of the 21st
century. Similarly of Kenya's about 8200 registered
doctors and about 4900 licensed health
facilities according to the Kenya Medical
Practitioners
and
Dentists
Board,
progressive digital practice should have
seen the unveiling of a public portal for
patients, who suffer or are treated to
healing at the hands of these doctors, so
they can rate and give their feedback on
their experience with the doctor or at the
medical facility.
Meanwhile since Uber came these
shores, Kenyans have experienced such
professionalism among drivers of this
(taxi) kind of public transport. The Once these doctors and health facilities
(and Insurance Companies) know that
their patient's feedback has the power over
the validity of their practice licenses, they
would take their work more seriously and
bring transparency to service pricing and
expertise based on experience.
In the future customers would look to find-
ing a hospital which has a loyalty program
for their patients. After all, it is the onus of
Kenyan medical practitioners to train Ken-
yans on the importance of having periodic
medical check-ups. Not as is the trend where
most Kenyans will only visit a doctor once
in unbearable pain, which normally is the
last step of the problem which could have
been identified and resolved earlier before it
got worse.
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You see, unlike in the financial industry,
where competition is very high with
company shareholders demanding profits,
therefore forcing participants out of their
comfort zone hence the high adoption
of innovation, Kenya's Medical industry
is its polar opposite, with no advertising
allowed, and most registered as NGO's so
no profits to report.
The acute shortage of experienced
specialists, means the laws of supply and
demand are highly skewed in favor of the
supply-side against demand, given the