By The Anchor Reporter
TOP past and present Medical Superintendents from Machakos County have been making a bee line to the Ethics and Anti Corruption Commission offices in Machakos to record statements over a controversial Afia One Billing System deployed by Governor Wavinya Ndeti's administration.
The inquiry has also ropped in Medical Services Chief Officer Dr. Miyienda and procurement officers mentioned by whistle blowers.
Miyienda led the team to trigger the recording of statements on Sunday, a very unusual day for investigators to record statements.
Summons initially went out to Medsups from Kathiani, Athi-River and Mwala. The Anchor was unable to establish the exact number of officials under summons.
The officers- commonly known as Medsups, have been visiting the offices in turns since yesterday morning to record statements over what they know about the procurement procedures of the system. It has been alleged that officials manipulated procurement procedures and secured a troublesome system that has been a headache to the patient management system.
EACC Boss in Machakos Mr Japheth Baithalu said the Medsups have been requested to appear before designated commission officers to ' clarify allegations that have been made about the procurement of the billing software. They are not coming as suspects. They are only providing the information that they know so that we make conclusions once we analyze the information we get from them. Mr.Baithalu said the process will end on Wednesday.
Medical Superintendents are normally medical doctors who lead the team of staff in Level 4 hospitals. That role is also performed by Senior Clinical Officers in lower level hospitals. There are about 12 Medsups in Machakos County.
Trouble for the Afya One system begun when users discovered that it was not use friendly for the management of patients. " It was not focused on the client's health management. Indeed, it is better focused on raising revenue for the hospital rather than managing the patient. I can say without doubt that the system was not patient oriented. It was money oriented." said a doctor who would not want to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.
The doctor said one glaring feature of the system was billing patients for utilities that they had bought with her own money- especially in the maternity unit. " When a mother is asked to buy gloves, she eventually finds it billed. The system caused problems by billing patients for what they buy", the doctor added.
Once it was procured, managers of the health department did not make follow ups on the support system for Afya One such as number of computers required and requisite training. "They even never responded to issues raised by system users", said the doctor adding that though most nurses were trained on how to use it, most doctors did not undergo the training.
" From the time it was installed, Afya One is always facing one challenge or another- from internet outage, missing firewall and endless hanging- resulting in a pretty bad experience. The system was steeped toward mischief from inception. It would show that the pharmacy had dispensed medicine worth Kes 30,000 even when it had a stock base of Kes. 2m.", the medic added.
