Patients or their caregivers could soon be able to pay bills for health services using money on their phones, while health facilities could transparently get paid due amounts by medical insurance firms, thanks to technology-enabled systems to be deployed in Rwanda, The New Times understands.

The development will address delays that patients face while paying for medical services due to long queues and paperwork, and disagreements between health facilities and insurers over how much the latter have to pay for services offered to their members, according to the Ministry of Health.

Officials from the Ministry of Health presented this to the Lower House’s Committee on Political Affairs and Gender on January 10 to respond to issues surrounding healthcare provision to residents.

It is expected that the technology will be rolled out within the first quarter (three months) of 2024, starting with referral hospitals including King Faisal Hospital, the University Teaching Hospital of Kigali (CHUK), and the University Teaching Hospital of Butare (CHUB).

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Insurance validation, health payment consume too much time

The Minister of Health, Dr Sabin Nsanzimana said the ministry assessed hospitals in 2023 to know how much time a person spends at the hospital while seeking treatment, on average.

To that end, he said, the ministry sent some of its workers, masquerading as patients, to different hospitals.

They found that on average, about 80 per cent of outpatient time seeking treatment is used in administrative procedures such as registration, insurance verification, and queuing for payment, while only 20 per cent is spent with a healthcare worker.

While giving his experience, a patient who spoke to The New Times on condition of anonymity said that the payment process took him a long time at the hospital on December 14, 2023.

"Making a payment for health services took me about four hours because there were long queues of patients who also wanted to pay,” he said, adding that a system that can solve the issue is laudable.

Technology as a solution

With the payment system, payment for health services will be easier for residents, without having to go in long queues, Nsanzimana said.

Dr Muhammed Semakula, Head of the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, and Health Financing at the Ministry of Health, said more than 95 per cent of Rwandans use health insurance while seeking medical services.

He said that a technology-enabled system was developed whereby insurance companies will be linked to operations in health facilities such that they will get real-time data about health services being offered to patients they insure.

On how the technology will work, people will be giving their national identification card, or insurance number which is then entered into a system, and the health services they are offered, as well as set prices in the system, will be accessed by health facilities including the personnel in charge of collecting payments, as well as insurance firms.

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Apart from addressing issues around delays in payment for healthcare, he said that the development will also solve misunderstandings between insurers and health facilities over medical bills the former have to pay for their members.

The misunderstanding, he indicated, resulted from the fact that verification of medical invoices was done manually, resulting in the verification process taking a long period.

"That will not be the case with the system because every service offered to a patient will be monitored by both health facilities and insurance firms and validated such that payments can be immediately processed easily,” Semakula said.

That system, he said, will be supplemented by a mobile app whereby a patient will see the service they are being offered and pay for it by using a mobile money option.

He indicated the system will be accessed by any person who has a phone – either a smartphone or a feature phone (through a USSD code).