Thanks be to Allah, the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) Referral Program (Ehalati) has managed to save the lives of 162 patients, after providing them with specialized services at reference hospitals, and referred 4,935 others over the period from January 10th to 16th, 2016 (corresponding to Rabie‘ Al-Awwal 30th to Rabie‘ Al-Akher 6th, 1437H). This comes as a part of the MOH's unstinting support to specialized therapeutic services throughout the regions of the Kingdom.
This was announced by the Supervisor of Ehalati Program, Mr. Suleiman Ahmad Al-Sharie, who revealed that out of the total cases referred to the specialized and reference hospitals, through an automated paperless system, 3,080 patients (amounting to 62.4%) were approved. On the other hand 1,324 progressing cases (at a rate of 26.8%) are still being considered, while 354 cases (at a rate of 7.2%) received treatment at the same hospital, and 177 cases (at a rate of 3.6%) were placed on the waiting list, to be dealt with in the coming period depending on their health condition.
Mr. Al-Sharie pointed out that the life-saving cases amounted to 162 (at a rate of 3.3%), while the emergency cases amounted to 1,452 (at a rate of 29.4%). Inpatients number amounted to 1,074 cases (at a rate of 21.8%), and the cases referred to the outpatient clinics amounted to 2,247 (at a rate of 45.5%) of all referred cases.
It's worth mentioning that ‘Ehalati’ Program is reckoned one of the new MOH's e-programs. Advantages of the program include providing medical counseling among physicians in the various medical facilities to study the health condition of the patients without the need to refer them. It also provides all the logistic and coordination-related requirements to refer the patient from one medical facility to another. In addition, Ehalati provides an accurate archiving and statistical system, which contains information of the referred patients through the program to different health facilities across the Kingdom.