In its recent report, the Central Board for Accreditation of Healthcare Institutions (CBAHI) has confirmed that the Kingdom's hospitals are committed to implementing the National Essential Safety Requirements, as they have witnessed a significant improvement during the past two years. As a result, the proportion of hospitals in the red category dropped from 80% in 2016 to 44% in 2018 and the number of hospitals in the green category increased from 8 hospitals to 51. Also, the private hospitals in the green category remarkably increased from 17% to 49%.
It a list of 20 national standards, including: ensuring correct identification of patients, verifying validity of qualifications, reporting medications errors, preventing wrong surgical procedure, ensuring safe blood transfusion, ensuring safety of high-alert medications, ensuring that all are safe from radiation hazards, as well as other requirements. According to the report's statistical data and figures, there are considerable changes in the performance of the Kingdom's hospitals in general and positive indicators in implementing these requirements.
It is noteworthy that patients' safety is one of the most important priorities of the health system and a cornerstone of the health service system. It is one of the key objectives for founding the CBAHI, through developing standards for optimum performance, field evaluation and accreditation, in addition to the recently established Saudi Center for Patient Safety. The center is reckoned one of the health system initiatives under the National Transformation Program 2020 to improve the healthcare safety, to reduce medical errors and to develop a national strategy for patient safety.