Kenyan grows healthcare group from one-bed apartment to eight hospitals By Our Reporter
D
r Maxwel Okoth (35) started what was to become the RFH Healthcare group in a one-room apartment in 2011. Over the next decade he grew the business to include eight hospitals and medical centres. The origins of RFH Healthcare Okoth is a graduate of the medical school at the University of Nairobi. In 2010, he started his internship at a public hospital in central Kenya. While it would have been easier for Okoth to join a large hospital or existing practice, he decided to become an entrepreneur. During his internship, he identified a gap in the existing value proposition. In Kenya, the established private medical institutions mostly serve the upper end of the market. There was a huge gap for a brand that was inexpensive yet provided service of acceptable quality. RFH Healthcare began in a onebedroom apartment in Ruai, a suburb in the eastern part of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. To attract patients, a plywood board advertised Okoth’s services, indicating the facility was open 24 hours, an important offering. The reception and waiting area were clean and tidy and news soon spread. Patients started requesting consultations. “They soon got attached to me, rather than the institution. When I was not there, they would come back when I was available,” he explains. Okoth’s mother lent him $3,000 as seed capital to start the business. When he was involved in a motor vehicle accident in 2012, the insurance paid out about $6,000. This covered much-needed X-ray and ultrasound equipment as well as theatre anaesthetic devices. It enabled him to do basic surgeries and provide services such as X-rays. Okoth finally realised that as much as people needed medical attention, many were not visiting the practice as the facility was just too small. He started to look for something bigger. Growing the hospital group Okoth contacted the landlord of an unfinished building in Ruai, who was so receptive to the idea of having a hospital in the area that he finished the construction, installed windows and tiles, and painted the building; something that is usually the responsibility of the tenant of a commercial building. To fund the equipment of the new Ruai Family Hospital, 40
www.thevoicenewsmagazine.com
Okoth applied for a loan from the Youth Enterprise Development Fund. While it was approved, the payment was delayed and he had to sell his wife’s car to cover immediate capital needs. With these funds, he finalised the new premises and put in 10 beds, a theatre, an X-ray room and ultrasound equipment. People started to visit in greater numbers. Over time, the hospital at Ruai grew to 40 beds and an ambulance was added. It offers general consulting, in-patient and maternity services, imaging, dialysis, general surgery, specialists, laboratory services and a pharmacy. Okoth relied on a bank loan to fund this growth. Ruai Family Hospital focuses on low- and middle-income earners, with pricing adjusted to fit in with the guidelines of the National Health Insurance Fund. The area in which the first hospital was situated was immortalised in the name: Ruai Family Hospital Healthcare or RFH Healthcare. The second family hospital of RFH Healthcare began as a result of the Ruai facility receiving a lot of referrals from the town of Tala, about 56 km east of Nairobi. Curious to find out where they were getting referrals from, Okoth and staff visited Tala and decided to open a 10-bed hospital there. I n 2016, he became aware of space in a gated community in the Nairobi suburb of Embakasi, with about 5,600 households. Okoth set up an outpatient centre in Embakasi, the RFH Medical Centre targeting middleincome earners to whom it provides a full range of medical services. Okoth had a vision of developing a hospital where more advanced services could be offered. In 2017, he obtained a loan from the bank and purchased land in the Ruai suburb, where the company built the RFH Specialist Hospital that commenced operations in 2019. The building of the hospital was initially funded through internally generated funds, which was crippling the business as it was moving working capital into real estate. To address this, Okoth obtained a loan from Business Partners International to finish the building. He also had to approach a local bank for funds to buy new equipment and finance working capital. Between 2019 and 2021, the group opened an additional four facilities in several Nairobi suburbs, to bring the total number of hospitals to eight. As for medical personnel, most of the staff works for RFH
