Kenyans urged to register biometrics for health insurance

The Chief Executive Officer of Kenya’s National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) has called on citizens not to drag their feet in enrolling their biometrics for the health scheme.

Local outlet Kenyans reports that the call comes after NHIF authorities noticed that just about 300,000 people have so far have acted on the mandatory biometric registration directive since the process was launched in June.

Beneficiaries of the scheme total about 10.4 million, according to the report.

In June, the NHIF said it was migrating from its traditional membership card identification method to a biometric system that would see members identified using fingerprint biometrics. It launched a mass biometric registration drive for the scheme as a result, beginning with the Nyeri Country.

The body said then that the move was not only intended to accelerate and improve claims management processes, but also to fight fraud and corruption triggered by the manual identification of members and processing of hospital bills.

In a recent tour to the Bungoma County, Devolution Cabinet Secretary Eugene Wamalwa repeated the need for all the other counties to encourage their residents to turn up for the biometric registration.

“I urge all the 47 devolved units to be part of the partnership to ensure that the registration of the targeted Kenyans is fast-tracked. Once you have been registered, do not fear accessing any health facility for services,” Kenyans quoted Wamalwa as telling another publication The Standard.

The introduction of biometric registration by members of the NHIF is one of the proposals made by a task force that was constituted to rethink the operations of the scheme in order to allow it offer better services to its subscribers.

Article Topics

Africa  |  biometric identification  |  biometrics  |  digital identity  |  fingerprint recognition  |  fraud prevention  |  healthcare  |  identity management  |  insurance  |  Kenya  |  patient identification