Duale Explains Why Hospitals Are Shifting from SHA Portal to HMIS

The government has clarified that the integration of hospital health management systems with the Social Health Authority (SHA) is intended to streamline healthcare operations, rather than replace the authority.

Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale said on Friday that the transition from the SHA Provider Portal to hospital-based Health Management Information Systems (HMIS) is part of efforts to improve the country’s digital health infrastructure.

The reform addresses a challenge that has affected healthcare facilities since the introduction of SHA. 

Many hospitals have been required to operate their internal HMIS alongside the SHA Provider Portal, creating parallel systems for managing patient information and submitting claims. Under the new approach, hospitals will use their existing HMIS platforms to communicate directly with SHA and other relevant health-sector systems. This is expected to reduce duplicate data entry and ease the administrative workload for healthcare workers.

Duale said the transition does not involve the introduction of a new platform. Instead, it is part of the government’s wider digital health architecture, which is being developed to modernise healthcare delivery and information management.

A key element of the reform is interoperability, allowing different systems used across the health sector to exchange information securely and efficiently.

The changes could also affect the way patients experience healthcare services. Reducing duplicate administrative tasks could allow healthcare workers to spend less time entering information into different systems and more time attending to patients.

Greater integration could also improve continuity of care. If patient information is captured once and made available across connected systems, authorised healthcare professionals could access relevant records more quickly during consultations, referrals and follow-up treatment.

For healthcare facilities, an integrated HMIS environment could connect functions such as admissions, inventory management, staffing, equipment tracking, financial administration and claims processing. Bringing these functions together could improve data accuracy and reduce inconsistencies caused by repeated data entry.

Hospital administrators could also use more reliable and timely information to improve planning, allocate resources and monitor services. This could help facilities identify operational challenges and respond to changes in demand.

The integration is also expected to benefit SHA and other healthcare payers. Connecting claims with information generated during patient visits could strengthen verification and improve the processing of reimbursements.

Integrated records could make it easier to identify duplicate claims, irregularities and possible fraud, while supporting the faster assessment and settlement of legitimate claims. However, implementation will remain critical to the success of the transition. Integrating systems across healthcare facilities with different levels of digital capacity will present technical and operational challenges.

The Ministry of Health will also need to address staff training, data security and service continuity as facilities adopt the new arrangements. The government says the objective is to connect existing components of the health system within a more unified digital framework.