Machakos Governor Wavinya Ndeti is planning to set up a Level 3 health facility, next to the Machakos level 5 hospital to ease congestion at the county’s main referral and enhance service delivery.
Wavinya said this during an impromptu visit to the Level 5 facility, where she stated that the upcoming level 3 facility will help in improving health services for the ever increasing urban population in Machakos Town and its environs.
She added that the Level 3 will mostly deal with walk-in patients, which will ease the burden on level 5 hospital, which mainly handle referrals.
“We have noted there’s a high number of patients with minor illness flocking to level 5 facility, which is basically a referral facility and to reduce the congestion and improve healthcare, we have taken the bold step to open a level 3 wing to deal with those cases,” added Wavinya.
Additionally, the governor noted the importance of patients with minor ailments receiving treatment on time at the level 3 facility, whose entrance will be facing the main Machakos stage and saving time that would have been lost on ques.
“Time that is meant to help treat patients with the most urgent cases is taken up by walk-ins, who have minor illness and that’s why we opted for a Level 3,” added the governor.
From the impromptu visit, she noted that Social Health Authority SHA takes time to access its systems and was also slow on clearing patients, highlighting the need to fast track the entire system integration between the County and National government to enhance efficiency.