Passion is the heartbeat of entrepreneurship. It’s the driving force that propels individuals to leap into the unknown, armed with nothing but a vision and unyielding determination, Dr. Maxwell Okoth, the co-founder of RFH Healthcare(Ruai Family Hospital) is passionate about providing access to quality and affordable healthcare. While working as a medical intern in Central Kenya, Okoth came face to face with the sad reality of Kenya’s overburdened healthcare system. From power outages in delivery rooms to lack of basic medical kits to perform an operation, the public health system was not working efficiently and often shortchanged patients when it came to service delivery.
“While doing rounds in theatre, I saw a gap in the area of access and provision of affordable health care and was inspired to act. There was a huge health need in Kenya that needed to be fixed, especially in maternal and child health care,”says the Bachelors of Medicine and Surgery from the University of Nairobi graduate.
According to the National Institutes of Health, Kenya’s maternal mortality rate is 414/100,000 live births, with only 42 percent of births attended by skilled health-care personnel while 53 percent attend antenatal care at least four times.
Nosing an opportunity to make healthcare more accessible and affordable, he sought to establish his own hospital. With his salary buttressed by a loan of Kes 300000 from his mother, he settled on Ruai, where he set up his first health facility in 2012.
Humble beginnings
With a strong will and determination to make a difference, Okoth started small, converting a one bedroom apartment into a health facility. With meagre resources, he still helped mothers to deliver, affording them the best quality of care at the delivery room.
His first employees, a clinical officer and a lab technician helped him run the show as he was still working as an intern at a District Hospital.”I needed the job to fund my dream project, which was yet to break even.” After paying for the facility’s rent, salaries for employees and buying clinic supplies from his pocket, he would be left with nothing. Before long, he opted to give up his residential house to sleep at the clinic and save on costs.
Passionate entrepreneurs see obstacles as challenges to be conquered, not barriers to retreat from.
It’s the force that keeps them pushing forward when faced with setbacks, turning failures into invaluable lessons. From the onset, Dr. Okoth was passionate about patient care, and has always dreamt of a situation where patients could access quality and affordable healthcare. With inadequate resources, his dream would take longer to realize, but one incident changed it all.
In December 2012, he was involved in a grisly road accident on his way to Nairobi to carry out a routine check on his clinic. Although he escaped unhurt, his car was written off.
Beyond the gloom, there was a speckle of hope. With insurers compensating him to the tune of Kes 600000, he toyed with the idea of replacing his car. Then came his Eureka moment; to invest the money into his small facility. “I placed a down payment for theatre equipment, X Ray and Ultrasound machines and pledged to repay the loan in installments.”
It was a breath of fresh air for his fledgling hospital as it acquired the much needed equipment. With improved services, patients got wind of the range and quality of services and before long, the facility was gaining popularity around Ruai and environs, especially from patients coming from public hospitals.
It was easy to see that the hospital was meeting a need as mothers started coming from afar, travelling all the way to Ruai for better maternity services.
Even with improved patient numbers, the hospital wasn’t breaking even, and Okoth was often subsidizing its costs from his own pocket.
When the first loan repayment was due, he had no option but to borrow from a bank to pay his creditors. Determined to make it work, he finally got an opportunity to spend time at the clinic, overseeing its day to day activities, and that’s how he discovered a loophole that could have driven his enterprise to extinction.
“Patient numbers were up but the revenues were stuck at Kes2000 per day. Staff were under-reporting the number of patients they had seen. I had to fire them.”
New dawn
With new staffers, the clinic was daring to start afresh and hope was alive. As if it was on cue, the stars had aligned and Ruai Family Hospital was now eyeing a bigger, renewed future. In 2014, Dr. Okoth’s Ruai Family Hospital received a shot in the arm after the Youth Enterprise Development Fund disbursed a loan of Kes 1.8Million in its favor.
With this outlay, Okoth was able to move the hospital to a bigger space, to serve more patients. Seeing a bright start, he convinced his wife to sell her car and invest the cash into the refreshed hospital. It worked. Within a short time, the hospital had 40 beds and 12 permanent staff and was then occupying three floors of an imposing building. It was easily the largest private hospital in the area.
Then followed a growth spurt. Ruai Family Hospital was listed with NHIF and all other major insurers and was seeing over 60 patients a day.
Beaming from his project’s tremendous success, Dr. Okoth bought land in Ruai in 2017 and and 2019, he began to build his dream hospital, the 100 bed RFH Specialist Hospital.
Realizing the enormity of the unmet need, he and his team
embarked on an expansion blitz that saw them establish more facilities in residential areas to cater for more patients.
Following a doctor’s strike in 2016, a trip to Tala township in Machakos county was enough to demonstrate to him and his team the urgent need for quality healthcare beyond Ruai. Paul Okoth, the Chief Finance Officer at RHF Healthcare recalls how they expanded to Tala.
“We saw how Tala was under-served. That’s how we ended up opening a small clinic in Tala in 2017.It’s now a 10-bed maternity hospital.”
Besides Tala, other densely populated areas of the Nairobi Metropolitan area were still under-served.
Today, he owns 10 hospitals in different localities, including the flagship Ruai Family Hospital in Ruai, a 24-hour outpatient facility in Embakasi, an outpatient facility in Jacaranda Gardens and the 10 bed Maternity hospital in Tala. Others are in Syokimau, Kahawa West, Ruiru, Komarock, Ruaka, Imara Daima and the 100-bed multi-specialty hospital in Ruai. The RFH specialist hospital is a behemoth that boasts of hosting the country’s fourth Pet-PT Scan. According to Dr. Okoth, the multi-specialist hospital will host one of Kenya’s largest oncology centers.
Looking back, Dr. Okoth is proud of the ups and downs that he has faced as an entrepreneur.
Beyond borders
Capital, he says, is always an impediment when it comes to running a hospital chain. While Dr. Okoth weathered all storms gallantly, he appreciates the role of financiers. His partnership with Medical Credit Fund allowed him to grow and thrive.
While passion ignites the spark, prudence steers the ship. As a prudent entrepreneur, he understands the value of hiring right. “It’s during recruitment where everything may go wrong or you must just get it right.” he says. He believes in teamwork and good corporate governance as catalysts of successful entrepreneurship. This explains why he stepped down as the hospital’s CEO in January 2023.
“I’m only stepping back from the day-to-day operations as CEO and being part of the Hospital from the board level. Ruai Family Hospital is in my DNA, and I believe those in our team will continue to benefit from the experience I have in my new oversight role. I have lived my legacy. It’s time to let go and pave the way for other persons who are equally qualified,” he said.
Under his watchful eye, RFH healthcare has soared above and even after stepping down as the CEO, he is optimistic that the hospital group in primed for the next phase of growth. Having reduced several pain-points for patients, it is not a surprise that the group of hospitals was voted the People’s Private Hospital of choice during the Quality Healthcare Kenya Awards in 2022.
Having tested the waters and discovered a novel way of solving the healthcare access gap, he feels that Africa is still under-served when it comes to access to affordable, quality healthcare. He dreams of expanding his brand, RFH Healthcare, beyond borders.
