How to Check if a Health Facility or Practician is Licensed

In recent years we’ve seen headlines of hospitals, clinics and other health facilities being closed down due to compliance issues. The bulk of these issues tend to be human resource related where we see quacks misrepresenting themselves as qualified medics.

This is cause for concern as such misrepresentation puts patients at risk of malpractices which often lead to poor health outcomes and worse, may even result in fatalities.

For this reason, it’s essential that any kind of medical practice is heavily regulated. In Kenya the body tasked with this vital role is the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Council (KMPDC).

Some of the council’s core regulatory functions include:

1. It registers and licenses all medical and dental practitioners.
2. It registers and licenses all health institutions including:
   • Public Hospitals
   • Private Hospitals
   • Faith-based facilities (i.e. mission hospitals)
   • Medical Centres, Dental Centres & Clinics
   • Nursing and Maternity Homes
   • Stand-alone funeral homes
3. It is tasked with the approval all medical and dental training institutions.

In order to fulfil part of this mandate, the council keeps a register of all compliant facilities and practitioners to ensure Kenyans get quality healthcare.

How to Check KMPDC Registers

You can verify that either is duly registered and licensed to operate by the council by checking against the respective registers provided in their site. To do this:

1. Visit the KMPDC site and select Registers from the menu.
2. In this page you’ll be provided with two registers: Registered Practitioners Registers and Registered Health Facilities Registers. The former is for individual practitioners while the latter is for medical institutions.
   
3. Expand the corresponding register and select the type of practitioner or facility you want to check in.
4. At the top of each register there’s a search box where you can enter a facility’s or practitioner’s name to quickly filter it from the list.
5. Once you find your match check the status column and verify its listed as Active. To view more details about a facility or practitioner (qualifications, speciality, sub-speciality etc.) just click the View button.

If you don’t find a facility or a practitioner in the register, then it’s probable that they’re either not duly registered or compliant. You can report this to KMPDC to verify this is indeed the case after which they can take the necessary actions.