The Changing Face of Healthcare Delivery at Longisa Hospital in Bomet

VOCATION HUB KENYA, Bomet, Kenya

From www.vocationhub.co.ke:

Located in Bomet County is Longisa referral hospital. Like any other day, patients stream into the hospital for various healthcare services.

Photo of a telehealth consult at Longisa County Referral Hospital from Vocation Hub Kenya

82 year old Alice has been ailing for the last four months. Her condition presents with shortness of breath, difficulty breathing even after walking very small distances, numbness in her feet among other symptoms. 

Doctors at Longisa hospital have been treating her for congestive heart failure. Her illness has been getting worse though, necessitating escalation of her case to a specialist. Today she is at Longisa to see a specialist.

Another patient, Mary has come in with a very chronic wound due to breast cancer. According to Dr. Weldon Kirui most patients come to hospital when their conditions have advanced. In a case such as Mary’s the disease has progressed and is more difficult to treat. She also needs a specialist, a breast oncologist.

While Longisa hospital has a general oncologist it lacks a breast specialist. Through virtual specialists made possible through telemedicine however Longisa is bridging this gap, and is able to offer patients the much needed quality, timely, affordable and specialized care without having to spend millions of shillings to treat the various ailments they may be suffering from outside of Bomet County or outside the country as is the case with Kenyans who suffer chronic illnesses.

Alice is excited to see her new doctor albeit remotely. Today she will be seen by a tele doctor, a cardiologist, Dr. James Beckerman from New York. Her doctors, who have been attending to her, take Dr. Beckerman through her history and the various treatments she has been undergoing under their care. Together doctors at Longisa discuss her response to treatment and progress so far. Dr. Beckerman makes his recommendations after even listening to the performance of the patients heart, “We have stethoscopes which we connect to the machine and the consulting doctor is able to hear what we are hearing, and we are able to manage the patient together and have that shared resource of a specialist. This are otherwise very expensive services that if the patient had to be referred outside Bomet County or the country would be very difficult to treat”.

Lack of a breast cancer specialist at Longisa has also presented a gap in information and management of such cases. The consulting specialist Dr. Sarah Walcott-Sapp after reviewing the wound of the breast cancer patient also takes time to share information with doctors at Longisa on how best to manage such a case in the future “we realized there is a gap in knowledge in our patient’s case that is why we escalated the case. The specialist takes this time to teach doctors here how best to manage a chronic wound, through continuous medical education (CME), the case is then reverted to local doctors for management”.

The CME according to Dr. Weldon Kirui who is Longisa referral hospitals assistant medical superintendent and the World Telemedicine Initiative (WTI) coordinator says such sessions allow medics at Longisa get access to the latest knowledge in management of chronic illnesses and best practices around the world and also informs supplies they get at the hospital based on the information they get thereby improving health services for the people of Bomet and also guarantees better patient outcomes.

The collaboration of Longisa referral hospital and World telemedicine Initiative began a year ago. According to Dr. Kirui the collaboration has offered a paradigm shift in healthcare delivery for the people of Bomet County. WTI supports telemedicine events around the world and Longisa was chosen as one of the sites in the region. The partnership has seen WTI recruit volunteer physicians from around the world. Longisa now has exposure to all specialists who are applicable to their setting helping greatly improve health service delivery at the hospital.

According to Dr. Kirui, Longisa hospital has a schedule running all through the month where different patients suffering from various ailments are seen every day and in case there is need for a  case discussion between the consulting tele doctors and doctors at Longisa the sessions are  conducted too. This has helped improve the overall delivery of services in the various departments.

Through this technology Longisa hospital has been able to successfully handle 154 critical cases in the last one year. This has seen the confidence of medical technology grow significantly. The County of Bomet  has since purchased two more machines that will be placed at Ndanai Sub county hospital and Kaplong mission hospital.

According to Felix Lang’at Longisa who is Longisa hospital administrative officer, the technology will allow for a wider coverage of doctors-patients engagement in the far flung areas of Bomet County. “County hospitals don’t have all the doctors and specialists needed and even though they had all of them, they cannot all be in all the facilities at the same time, hence this technology will address this gap”.

Statistics from the World Telehealth Initiative show that 8.6 million people die annually from treatable conditions. 3.6 million receive no healthcare and 5 million receive substandard healthcare. An additional 15 million healthcare workers will be needed by 2030 to meet the demands of the global population. Advancement in medical technology and in this case Telemedicine offers the much needed solution that will bridge the gap and ensure that future generations have access to timely, qualified health services irrespective of their location in the world.