Reforming the Law on Corporate Governance for Health Care Providers in Kenya: Focus on Quality of Care

Abstract

This research paper seeks to examine the law on corporate governance for health care providers in Kenya with a focus on quality of care. The state of health care in Kenya is wanting in several ways with several instances of medical negligence, unqualified persons handling patients amongst others. This paper examines whether there are improvements which can be made on corporate governance laws for health care providers in Kenya to better focus on quality of care and therefore reduce the instances of poor quality of care. The paper argues that there are few black letter legal provisions on specific corporate governance arrangements for health care providers in Kenya but there are numerous laws prescribing quality of care of requirements for health care providers. The legal provisions on corporate governance arrangements require some improvements to amongst other things ensure that there is a prescribed corporate governance code for different level of health care providers. This can be borrowed from other countries or from the education sector in Kenya which has an elaborate corporate governance arrangements in various statutes for various level of educational facilities. Corporate governance refers to how an organisation is led, managed or controlled. It is therefore vital for every health care provider to enshrine quality of care requirements in all aspects of the organisation and give quality of care enough prominence and attention at the board of directors/governing body level. Whereas there are several laws prescribing quality of care requirements and there is no law prohibiting a health care institution from putting in place corporate governance arrangements focussing on quality of care, the law falls short by failing to have a minimum corporate governance code for health care providers. This means that the law prescribes the standards of care but does not provide for a minimum corporate governance arrangement to enable the health care institutions achieve the standards. Some institutions established through the State Corporation Act such as the Kenyatta National Hospital and the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital have corporate governance requirements in the constituting law but these require to be revamped to give quality of care the prominence it deserves for example by having a dedicated committee of the board dealing with quality of care issues.