Out of 142,643 major routine surgeries, the Ministry of Health's (MOH) hospitals conducted 60,378 one-day surgeries during the last year, at a rate of 42.33%, with the exception of emergency and minor operations, according to the Supervisor-General of the Bed Management Program Dr. Yaser Al-Ghamdi.
He said that Najran region came first in terms of the number of one-day surgeries with 65.68%, followed by Bisha Province (61.57), Al-Ehsa Province (60.96%), Taif Province (60.07) and Jazan Province (48.27%).
Dr. Al-Ghamdi added that the program aims to provide a bed for each patient easily and conveniently to be used in emergency and routine cases, make the optimum use of available resources to ensure effective and efficient use of beds, provide ideal coordination to receive and refer patients, and ensure the effective management and operation of beds, thereby reducing the cost, occupancy rates and availability of beds.
The program, according to Dr. Al-Ghamdi, targets also ensuring the management and operation of beds efficiently and effectively, to reduce duration of hospitalization and increase beds' turnover so as to provide vacant beds for emergency and routine cases. The program, he said, also aims at supporting teamwork, achieving justice, paying attention to patients' rights, and achieving efficiency, effectiveness, transparency, improvement and development.
He pointed out that the Bed Management E-Program mainly aims at obtaining indicators about actual bed capacities in hospitals, the rate of beds' turnover monthly, duration of patients' stay in hospital, the occupancy rate in hospitals, particularly in ICUs, the number of admitted and discharged cases throughout the day, the number of Saudi and non-Saudi hospitalized patients, the number of long-stay patients who are hospitalized for more than 30 days, the number of patients whose expected date of discharge expired, as well as duration of patients' waiting for a bed to be hospitalized at clinics in routine and emergency cases.
It is noteworthy that the program started on 3-4-1430H including all MOH's hospitals after the establishment of a department to oversee the bed programs in all health affairs directorates in the Kingdom.