How Nairobi Women's Hospital allegedly defrauded patients through unnecessary medical procedures to grow revenue
"How Nairobi Women's Hospital milked patients dry in crazy revenue game"
...As part of the shift from Dr Thenya’s ownership to the new owners, the PE funds had launched what was typical corporate behaviour after acquiring a new asset. Nairobi Women’s Hospital had, over time, stopped hiring doctors, professionally known as medical officers (MOs), most of whom were postgraduate students or specialists in training, to serve outpatient patients. It had instead turned to hiring young clinical officers (COs), who only had a diploma earned after three years of training, to do the job.
To staff its rapid expansion, Nairobi Women’s was now depending on COs to serve patients who were not already admitted in the hospital. It was also encouraging them, according to multiple insiders, to meet admission and revenue targets, which were analysed every hour of every day, day and night.
While the hospital still hired doctors, it hired fewer than it required because MOs would get better salaries, and gave clinical officers the job of determining which patient needed to be admitted. It also gave the COs a financial incentive, at one point Sh710 for every patient they admitted. This structure meant that, while COs would find and push for admissions, even (and especially when) they were unnecessary, more qualified medical officers would only encounter the patients when they had already been admitted and were already paying for the bed, food, tests and medicines. They were already, in lingo used frequently in the leaked WhatsApp group messages, “customers”.