His Excellency the Minister of Health, Dr. Tawfig Fawzan AlRabiah, stated that the Ministry of Health (MOH) and the Ministry of Civil Service (MCS) have jointly launched the E-Sick Leave Service, highlighting that it will benefit both patients and employees, in addition to e-data transfer and verification.
During the launch of this service today (Thursday) at MOH Headquarters, AlRabiah said: “I am very pleased with this joint cooperation between MOH and MCS to provide such distinguished service to employees of the public sector, and later to those of the private sector – Allah’s willing. Both patients and employees will benefit from this service, while the employer will have the advantage of the transfer, verification and easy access to e-data.”
AlRabiah added that this paperless service will definitely facilitate procedures for both patients and their employers, in addition to utilizing it in statistics to determine challenges, diseases – May Allah forbid - and treatment methods. AlRabiah extended his thanks to all colleagues at MOH and MCS for their joint and professional effort that will serve all government employees.
According to AlRabiah, this new service will be available at all public and private hospitals and health centers for all public and private sector employees to facilitate the submission of their sick leave requests to their employers, in addition to availing the data for those in charge to replace those employees on sick leave. AlRabiah also referred to the statement of His Excellency the Minister of Civil Service that 80,000 sick leaves have been granted by 8,400 health practitioners so far, and the numbers are still growing.
For his part, His Excellency the Minister of Civil Service, Mr. Sulaiman Al-Hamdan, said: “We are so pleased with this joint cooperation between MOH and MCS to automate the sick leave service. Although this project might seem small to some, it is important and its desirable benefits are great. This step comes as part of a series of other projects and initiatives adopted by MCS, in collaboration with other ministries and government entities, to automate many current procedures and to go paperless. Such projects, conducted by MCS, MOH or any other ministries, come under the Digital Transformation Program (DTP), which is paid a great importance and interest by His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince, and all senior officials of the Kingdom.”
Al-Hamdan added: “Everyone has noticed the positive indications and many projects, which have recently been launched in a number of service ministries that directly impact the citizen. The real goal of this E-Sick Leave Service, as stated by Dr. AlRabiah, is to provide a quick and convenient top-level service, while the other goal is to assist the government entities to analyze and utilize these data.”
Al-Hamdan further stated: “Today, we can make the right decision by increasing the data quality – Allah’s willing. Utilizing such accurate data, we, in MCS, MOH, or any other ministries and government entities, can quickly analyze and study the data, the matter which would ultimately enable us to amend those procedures.”
According to Al-Hamdan, this E-Sick Leave Service enables MCS to monitor the increase of leave requests during certain periods or those of certain job positions. Based on these indications, MCS can rectify the current procedures to be more convenient for the employee. The service will also help MCS analyze the geographical dimension and the places of persons on leave across the Kingdom’s regions and cities or in government entities. A lot of rich and accurate information will be available through this system to enable decision-makers to take the right decisions – Allah’s willing.
It is worth mentioning that Their Excellencies the Minister of Health and the Minister of Civil Service have launched today this E-Sick Leave Service, in the presence of a number of officials from both ministries. The service enables health facilities to register patients’ sick leave requests by verifying their data, their doctors’ data, the health facilities and their reliability for issuing the leave requests, as well as notifying patients via SMS of their leave issuance.
The fruitful cooperation between MOH & MCS resulted in automating and connecting the service to the human resources in the government entities to facilitate sick leave request inquiries by individuals and entities, as well as eliminating paper-based medical referrals.
It is noteworthy that this service comes under MOH’s e-health initiative, which is one of its forty initiatives in the National Transformation Program (NTP) 2020.