In the presence of His Excellency the Minister of Health Dr. Tawfiq Al-Rabiah the Ministry of Health (MOH) Launched today, Sunday its first health initiative of the National Transformation Program (NTP) 2020, titled "Healthcare Model", which comes as part of a series of more than 40 initiatives to be announced later.
Addressing the ceremony held on this occasion at Princess Nora bint Abdul Rahman University's Apex Conferences Center, Al-Rabiah said, "Prior to involve in any work to upgrade the health services, we have to evaluate the status quo objectively, as we lose 8000 persons to traffic accidents and the death of tens of thousands to injuries, not to mention chronic diseases which increase the rate of premature deaths in society, in addition the increase in the rates of obesity, reduced rate of physical activities and that smoking are more common specially among youth". He added that such facts will inevitably raise the budgets allocated for health care year after year and may reach 250 billion riyals in 2030.
"The need obliged us to introduce a health system that fully accommodates our current and future needs and that we are in need of having a new system based on unconventional foundations even regarding its finance, management, evaluation and development. Therefore, the most important components of the health transformation is the institutionalization of the system, as well as reformulating method of finance to be independent and flexible depending on payment against service not the budgeting system, in an endeavor to increase the effectiveness of the exerted efforts and finance", he said, pointing out that the establishment of this system must be compatible with the current data, prospecting for the future data in order to have, Allah willing, a health model that meets the needs for us and our children for years to come and maintains health and safety of all.
He said that population growth in our country is the highest worldwide, which coincides with the need to increase capacity of health service, and the challenge is doubled if we add to this the factors we mentioned above such as traffic accidents, obesity rates and low rate of physical activity.
Thanks to Allah, the MOH has realized many achievements in its different sectors and services during the previous period, at the level of the primary healthcare, the most important component in our health system, 80 primary healthcare centers were opened all over the Kingdom since last month of Shaban, bringing the total number to 2,390 centers that provided many services including primary care, vaccinations, dealing with chronic disease and maternity and children care for more than 52 million patients, he said.
Also, during the last year, he added, more than 2 million persons have been vaccinated against influenza, the number of health centers working for 16 hours a day increased by 100%, and currently we have 152 centers following the extended system, 498 on-call centers, and emergency care centers increased by 50%, totaling 107 centers.
Al-Rabiah pointed out that the number of counseling clinics which provide primary psychological care have been doubled to reach 55 clinics and consulting clinics have been added to 82 health centers throughout the Kingdom's regions, in addition to that anti-smoking clinics increased by 160% to reach 160 clinics, and 55 centers have achieved accreditation certificate in standards of medical quality from the Saudi Central Board for Accreditation of Healthcare Institute (CBAHI).
He explained that with the participation of 9,300 medical and health teams from health centers the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) project was launched targeting around 50,000 families or 250,000 persons in different regions of the Kingdom, with the aim of developing accurate database about the health status in the Kingdom.
Regarding the public health programs, Al-Rabiah said that the MOH continued with implementation of several programs and activities such as: educational health campaigns and health promotion campaigns with the interaction of more than 3 million targeted persons and covered many important health topics such as: diabetes campaigns, breast cancer detection campaign, colon cancer, breast cancer, diabetes, malaria, influenza, kidneys, tuberculosis, heart, arthritis, osteoporosis, antibiotics, AIDS and others. Also, the MOH has exerted great efforts to improve the work mechanism of the 937 center which provided 100,000 medical consultations, as well as more than 15,000 medical consultations via the social media sites.
In the field of therapeutic services, we have more than 279 hospitals with 42,000 beds, receiving 16 million patients at their outpatient clinics annually, while emergency departments receive 18 million emergency cases and 21 million injuries, he said, adding that the MOH's hospitals have conducted more than 500,000 surgical operations, 240,000 births, in addition to the newborn early screening program which during the last four years have detected 720,000 cases of which 622 were in need of therapeutic intervention, and that the hearing test increased by 89% and newborn cardiac test by 90%. There are other achievements which have focused on raising operation efficiency, developing administrative performance and work environment, in addition to qualifying cadres of various specialties and categories, and that the work is underway to cope with the ever-increasing need for healthcare services, quality and quantity-wise, he added.
"Of course, many of you are wondering about health insurance! Will it be applied? When? The answer is that it will be applied, Allah willing, but however, for the health insurance to be beneficial for citizen health, it should be connected with a well-established health system, including its services, providers of these services, administrative and financial systems, method of financing and interconnection between its components. All these must be appropriate and ready before starting the health insurance. Many countries have applied and still applying a health system that lacks such infrastructure, leading to their failure, and inability to find a good health system because they disregarded some basic steps that are important for having a health insurance that has impact on beneficiaries. In any way, we cannot start where others have begun but we must start where others have ended, and benefit from their experiences in this regard. Therefore, we shall begin with upgrading the level of existing health services and also adding new services to our health system, and prior to start improving of health services, it was so necessary to redesign the health system to be appropriate with the current and future needs.
He went on saying that we are here today to jointly launch an important component of the MOH's plan for a healthy future in the Kingdom, pointing out that each health system is based on a work mechanism for provision of health care, and other mechanisms and methods showing how individual and community benefit from the health services, based on effective care model.
"Dear brothers and sisters, today we share with you the new model for health care in the Kingdom", said Al-Rabiah, pointing out that the model was designed with participation of all stakeholders from all regions and cities of the Kingdom, and was designed to be the core of change we aspire to have for ourselves and children.
He added that the model aims at making citizen the focus of its attention, as well as benefiting from experiences, employing energies, using resources wisely and effectively, facing challenges, aspiring to better future and caring for healthy people before sick ones, and through its support and care healthy people will be able to maintain their health an patients treat their illness.
The model, he said, will restructure the primary healthcare and support it with tools and initiatives making it effective and closer to the citizen. Also, technology will be the main component of the model, making it a contemporary model achieving the utmost utilization of the thecnology and latest developments.
Concluding his specch, Al-Rabiah said that the model will enable individuals and community to contribute to maintaining health and the correct way to deal with diseases, and then receiving medical service, and that the model will transfer the services from hospitals to homes and will focus on results and impact rather than activities and management and the principle of "prevention is better that cure". Therefore, through the model there will be special focus on public health programs, health promotion activities and health education with all its tools and effective contemporary means.
Then, a number of dignitaries delivered speeches, including Dr. Muhammad Al-Sagheer who talked about the healthcare model and its components, Dr. Khalid Al-Shaibani about the health transformation program, Dr. Hesham Al-Khashan about reforming and restructuring the healthcare services, Dr. Abdullah Asiri about the National Center for Disease Prevention, Dr. Abdelah Hausawi about the Saudi Center for Patient Safety. Dr. Rashid Al-Qawan about institutional transformation of MOH facilities, Dr. Yousif Basudan about partnership between public and private sectors and Mr. Hamad Afifi spoke about increasing the number of health practitioners and improving their training.