A delegation from Machakos County Government on Thursday visited Kirinyaga County for a bench-marking tour on healthcare service delivery.
The visit by a team comprising senior officers from Machakos department of Health and Medical Services came a week after Governor Wavinya Ndeti, alongside other governors, toured Kerugoya Medical Complex during the G7 Kirinyaga Chapter Activation.
Wavinya had said that she was committed to leveraging successful healthcare model from Kirinyaga County to foster health system improvement for the benefit of Machakos residents. “I shall also built 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 had said.
Led by the acting County Executive Committee for Health, Justus Kasivo, the Machakos team visited various departments at the state-of-the-art medical facility that was opened last year.
“Our visit comes as result of the impression that our governor got when she visited the county last week. We are here to learn and pick some of the best practices that we can replicate in our county in order to improve on the services we are offering to our people,” said the CEC.
Justus Kasivo (Left) and Kirinyaga Chief Officer of Health, Dr. Muriithi Nyaga (Right) and other county government officials during a bench-marking tour to Kerugoya Level Five Hospital
The county Chief Officer of Health Facilities and Infrastructure, Rashid Kara, noted that Kirinyaga has significantly improved on its healthcare service delivery and infrastructure hence making it an ideal destination for bench-marking. “We also wanted to understand on matters concerning revenue collection and we have picked great ideas that we will implement back at home,” said Rashid.
The team was also interested in Kirinyaga’s digitized healthcare management system, which has streamlined operations and improved patient care efficiency.
Kirinyaga County is among the counties leading in the journey towards the achievement of Universal Healthcare and has been lauded for its innovative approaches to healthcare which include the Hospital Management Integrated System which ensures accountability, monitoring and evaluation of the healthcare system.
Speaking during the visit, the Kirinyaga Chief Officer of Medical Services, Dr. Mureithi Nyaga said that the County Government was pleased to host the delegation from Machakos County and share insights that can help the delegation in improving their healthcare systems.
“Since the official opening of the Kerugoya Complex, we have seen a huge increase in the patients we see daily, recording up to 600 patients in the outpatient department,” said Dr. Mureithi. Since the opening of the Kerugoya Medical Complex, delegations from various counties have been visiting the facility with the aim of borrowing some of the best practices to implement in their counties.