His Excellency the Minister of Health Dr. Tawfiq bin Fawzan Al-Rabiah inaugurated today, Tuesday, the new center of 937 Service Center, for serving patients and their families, following up their satisfaction with the provided health services and providing them with urgent health tips.
He lauded the big role played by the center in serving citizens and residents in the Kingdom around the clock by a number of emergency specialists and physicians, to respond to inquiries by beneficiaries of the service and forward specialized inquiries to consultants to give answers for them.
Al-Rabiah confirmed that the center is reckoned a paradigm shift in the health services as the Ministry of Health (MOH) always striving to develop and improve its health services, in implementation of the royal directives and proceeding from the MOH keenness to take advantage of the support the health sector receives form the government of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, the Crown Prince and the Deputy Crown Prince, to positively be reflected on the development of health services and provision of health care to citizens and meeting their health needs.
He pointed out that the 937 emergency call center provides a number of outstanding services which include: inquiries about health service sites, medical counseling, internal referral, treatment abroad and notifications and complaints coming from all government and private health facilities.
He said, "Through these centers the MOH seeks to win the satisfaction of the citizens, as the total number of notifications in three days reached 91%, while it was initially about 45%, the satisfaction of citizen with the services of the call center was 83% and currently is 83%. We would like to have the same level of satisfaction with the services of the 937 Service Center, reflected on improvement of the citizens satisfaction with the services of our health facilities Kingdom wide," he said, pointing out that there are great challenges and some sort of dissatisfaction with the health facilities however, we aim at upgrading our services in the coming period and certainly it will take time and we are working on them as part of the transformation program 2030.
He extended his thanks to those in charge of the service and urged them to double their efforts and continue to provide the service for the citizens and beneficiaries of the 937 service.
The center receives calls from patients concerning the health issues in addition to complaints and remarks around the clock, which will be redirected to the relevant departments at the ministry and its branches for further action, as well as all emergency and urgent calls, as the center is deemed to be an attentive ear to patients to get acquainted with their needs and work to implement them.
Also, the center works on preparing and analyzing statistics to get acquainted with the current status of the health services in regions and provinces, in order to upgrade them and include them within the MOH's developmental plan, in addition to spreading the culture of awareness and receiving medical consultations and inquiries about infectious diseases, toxins and medicines, around the clock.
It is noteworthy that the 937 service center is one of the most important initiatives of the MOH, with the aim of providing medical services via phone call to the center from all parts of the Kingdom, as the center work is based on receiving, responding, implementing and analyzing of calls. It also evaluates the regions' performance on closing out the notifications submitted by citizens and the extent of their satisfaction with the provided services. The evaluation is published on a weekly basis and with the direct follow-up of the Minister of Health.
The center was established in 1433H starting with a call center. An employee or more, from every department or region, are assigned to receive and notify the call center of the actions taken with regard to the notification, throughout the 24 hours.
It is to be noted that the number of calls answered by the incoming call employees of the 937 service center reached 183,355 calls during the past five months, while the number of answered calls regarding medical consultations reached 59,672 calls. The numbers of complaints received by the center has also increased, and has been interacted with and answered in a quick and timely manner.