The Ministry of Health (MOH) has announced the launch of several initiatives to develop the primary healthcare centers and improve the quality of their services, in line with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 and in such a manner that contributes to improving the performance of these centers.
Within the same vein, the MOH has pointed out that one of these initiatives is that of the specialist consulting clinics in healthcare centers, where to provide the services of family physicians and major medical specialties: (internal medicine, general surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatric, mental healthcare). This comes prior referral to hospitals for the patients and visitor’s convenience, by means of ensuring a specialist doctor at the consulting center instead of going to the hospital, and in order to get an appointment easily and in a short period, as well as reducing the pressure over hospitals and raising the efficiency of healthcare centers; in an endeavor to achieve the aspirations of the beneficiaries of health services and promote the training efficiency. Thus, 69 consultancy centers are currently running across the different regions of the Kingdom, and the Ministry is seeking to increase the number to 180 centers this year (2017).
It is worth mentioning that the MOH has recently allocated a number of on-duty healthcare centers to provide the emergency healthcare centers across the different regions of the Kingdom. These centers include 27 centers working around the clock, 151 centers working for 16 hours, and only one center working for 13 hours, in addition to 496 centers working with on-call system.