His Excellency the Minister of Health, Dr. Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Rabeeah on Tuesday approved a decision to the effect that nine private medical facilities are to be shut down in several districts in Riyadh as a precautionary closure.
The Ministry of Health (MOH) made clear that the closure decision for these facilities was issued according to what the field inspection teams of the Private Sector Department in the General Directorate for Health Affairs in Riyadh detected of irregularities, which included working without obtaining ultimate license or with invalid licenses, in addition to recruiting cadres unlicensed to practice the health professions.
Thus, these decisions have been translated into shutting down 5 medical complexes, in addition to two clinics and two optical centers as a result of systemic irregularities after having them submitted to Medical Irregularities Committee in the General Directorate for Health Affairs in Riyadh. These systemic irregularities ranged from the unavailability of the minimum limit of the medical cadres, working without obtaining regular licenses, the shortage of the medical equipment in terms of ambulances or emergency equipment to the unavailability of the minimum limit of consultants in each complex. Further, some of these complexes work without obtaining the ultimate licenses for the cadres of facilities. Hence, after having these irregularities submitted to the Private Health Institutions Irregularities Committee, the closure decisions were issued.
As such, the Ministry of Health (MOH) remarked that these decisions come from the Ministry's interest in maintaining the patients' health and safety and upgrading the provided health services from the private health sector.
Within the same vein, the Ministry of Health affirmed that it would not condone any insufficiency infringing upon the citizens' and residents' health and safety, and it would continue applying the heaviest penalties and regular procedures towards any health institution, not in conformity with the quality measures required for the health services. This is in order to oblige them improving their conditions and removing all the regularities according to the regular procedures.
Further, the Ministry of Health (MOH) stressed on the private sector, as its being a strategic partner in the health development, with the importance of conformity, as hoped, with the recognized scientific measures of quality; in order to provide the beneficiaries with the high-quality health services.
It is worthwhile to mention that these decisions come along with several previous closure decisions in Riyadh, which included, during the past twelve months, shutting down 3 hospitals, 30 medical complexes, 15 civil clinics, 29 pharmacists, 27 optical centers and 5 physical therapy centers. This comes as a precautionary procedure until they improve their conditions and apply the quality measures required for these facilities.
Further, the total value of the irregularities reached RS 3,754,000; the pharmacies came as the highest irregularities in terms of value, as its total value of irregularities reached RS 1,985,000.