What does a read of The Nairobi Hospital, which is probably the top hospital in East Africa, tell us about the state of medical investments here? The Nairobi Hospital (NH) was founded in 1954, and it, alongside Aga Khan Hospital,  is where top leaders, politicians from Kenya and the East Africa region are treated. It is also where middle-class Kenyans, tourists, and anyone with private medical insurance is treated or operated on.

Nairobi Hospital room

But treatment at Nairobi Hospital is not cheap; , a few days stay without surgery will cost about Kshs 300,000 (about $3,000) and a night in the intensive care unit (ICU ) is about Kshs 500,000!

Kenyans who have medical conditions have discovered that traveling to India for surgery, medicine, and other complex treatment procedures is a better option, even after one factors in the cost of travel for patient and relatives who oversee the patient.

Anyway, how does the Nairobi Hospital (officially registered as the Kenya Hospital Association) in 2016 compare to a few years earlier with the hospital’s 2009 report?

• Turnover was Kshs 8.79 billion (~$88 million), up from 8.0 billion in 2015.
• They had a surplus of Kshs 1.3 billion  ($13 million) up from Kshs 1.06 billion, but below the Kshs 1.4 billion in 2014.
• Some income items: Pharmacy income was 2.5 billion (a 13% growth on the previous year) and the pharmacy had 60% growth in chemotherapy sales thanks to NHIF package (partnership with NHIF has opened doors to our brothers and sisters who would otherwise have not received world class health services. This has seen a rise in number of patients accessing their preferred health care in our Cancer Center, Renal Unit and Catheterization Laboratory. Laboratory income was Kshs 1.4 billion (they have also implemented o shore reporting from India for CT scan, MRI and mammography). Physiotherapy revenue was Kshs 246 million, and accident and emergency revenue was Kshs 374 million (53% of visits were done in 75 minutes and they plan to reduce the waiting time).
• Some expense items: The Nairobi Hospital paid salaries of Kshs 2.5 billion (compared to Kshs 2.1 billion in 2015) and they added 276 staff in the year (including 128 nurses), a CEO, Company Secretary, and a Security Manager. Key management compensation dropped from Kshs 130 million to Kshs 93 million (in 2015) – and does that difference correspond to the salary of the outgoing CEO who left to become Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Health? They also bought medicine worth Kshs 1.7 billion, paid cleaning costs of Kshs 71M, Oxygen with 41M and paid Kshs 21 million to credit card companies
• The Nairobi Hospital invested Kshs 2.1 billion in projects such as pharmacy, water storage, parking, nurses accommodation, roads, fencing, and kitchen improvements. They also hired a marketing agency to improve the image and awareness about services at the hospital and participated in news interviews, features, and social media.  
• Some operational numbers for the hospital: They had 154,760 visits to accident & emergency centre, carried out 685,802 lab tests, handed out 354,296 prescriptions, and did 98,198 radiology procedures. They had 18,386 admissions, had 2,730 births (a 17% decline from the year before), and did 7,990 major operations and 1,975 minor ones. They also an occupancy level of 79%, which was down from 81% on their 299  beds, and they retained their customer satisfaction measure of 89%.  The relocation of their ICU / HDU units temporarily reduced capacity from 356 to 299 beds. 
• On the finance side, they had cash and equivalents of Kshs 2.7 billion (down from 3.5 billion) but still a very healthy liquidity position. They also had Kshs 399 million at Imperial Bank and had Kshs 280 million of doubtful debts (up from 240 million), and Kshs 24 million in foreign exchange losses from currency fluctuations.  
• The new Nairobi Hospital CEO wrote that his strategy would revolve around talent, technology, turnaround and territory (new location to enhance service). On the health industry, which contributes 6% to GDP, he wrote that income at the Kenya government’s National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) had more than doubled to Kshs 28.5 billion in 2016 thanks to new rates levied on Kenyan workers and that there were 172,706 health personnel in Kenya in 2016.