Why SHA is shifting hospitals from portal to HMIS, Duale explains

Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale has clarified why the government is transitioning from the Social Health Authority (SHA) Provider Portal to Health Management Information Systems (HMIS).

In a statement, Duale said the move aims to reduce duplication, waiting times and administrative work in hospitals.

The clarification comes amid confusion over the government's plan to move healthcare facilities to HMIS as part of efforts to establish a more integrated digital health system.

The government had initially set September 30 as the deadline for facilities to migrate, with the SHA Provider Portal set to be shut down. However, the Ministry of Health has since extended the deadline by one month to October 30 to give facilities more time to complete the transition.

According to Duale, the Digital Health Agency (DHA) introduced the SHA Provider Portal to support healthcare providers in submitting and transmitting claims during the transition to the Social Health Authority.

He said hospitals have, however, been required to operate two separate systems, their own HMIS for day-to-day hospital operations and the SHA portal for claims and related transactions.

“This has created additional administrative work for healthcare facilities and, in some instances, contributed to longer processing and waiting times for patients,” Duale said.

The recent transition, he says, is intended to make the hospital's HMIS the primary system through which healthcare services and related information are managed.

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He clarified that HMIS is not a new system being introduced to replace existing hospital systems, but part of the wider digital health infrastructure being rolled out by the government.

“This is not a new system; it’s part of the already ongoing rollout of the digital superhighway, and already paid-for suite of SHA systems,” he said.

Under the new arrangement, hospital HMIS platforms are expected to integrate and communicate with SHA and other relevant health-sector systems, reducing the need for healthcare workers to repeatedly enter or transfer the same information.

“The broader objective is simple: one hospital system that can securely communicate with the different systems supporting healthcare delivery,” Duale said.

The government had previously said the transition would help address challenges associated with the SHA Provider Portal, including delayed reimbursements, weak verification and claims fraud. HMIS is expected to support real-time patient verification, electronic claims processing and secure provider authentication.

Duale said the integrated system would also improve the quality and availability of health information by allowing data captured during the provision of care to flow to relevant systems.

For patients, the government expects the change to reduce waiting times and improve continuity of care by allowing authorised healthcare workers to access relevant medical information through an integrated workflow.

Duale said the system could also allow medical records, including scans, to be accessed across different facilities.

“Today, if you do an MRI in Nairobi or Mombasa and next week you are somewhere else, you don’t have to carry it or that CT scan physically. You just need to log in, and your doctor can see it from anywhere,” he said.

The government says the transition is also expected to improve claims processing by linking claims more closely to patient encounters and services delivered, while making it easier to identify duplicate claims, inconsistencies and unusual transactions.

For hospitals, the system is expected to reduce duplication of work and improve the management of patients, staff, facilities, medicines, equipment and financial processes.

Duale said the broader objective was to move away from fragmented systems towards an interoperable digital health ecosystem.

“The objective is not simply to replace one portal with another. The bigger objective is to connect the different components of the healthcare ecosystem,” he said.

The Ministry of Health has said the transition has already progressed across public, faith-based and private facilities.

According to the latest update, all 6,427 public Level 2 to 4 health facilities have completed the transition. Four public Level 5 facilities have also migrated, while 23 are at different stages of the process.

The government is supporting 518 contracted faith-based facilities with installation and migration, with 38 having completed the process so far. Kenyatta National Hospital and Kenyatta University Teaching, Referral and Research Hospital are expected to complete their transition in the coming days, while other Level 6 facilities have until October 30.

Private facilities that already operate HMIS platforms have also started the certification process, with 28 existing HMIS platforms having been certified by the Digital Health Agency. The agency is expected to provide technical support to facilities throughout October.

Duale has assured patients that the transition will not affect access to healthcare services, insisting that the focus should be on ensuring that the migration is smooth and that healthcare facilities receive the technical support needed to complete the process.

“No patient will be denied access to healthcare services because a facility has not yet fully transitioned to HMIS,” he said.

“The ultimate beneficiary should be the patient: less paperwork, fewer repetitive processes, reduced waiting time, better continuity of care and a more efficient healthcare experience.”