The Ministry of Health (MOH) has intensified its inspection tours to ensure implementation of the preventive measures to combat infection in health institutions. In continuation of its efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19, MOH’s compliance teams have carried out over 190,000 inspection field tours. MOH pointed out that the inspection tours included all types of health institutions (over 50,000 hospitals, 47,000 medical complexes, 7,500 cardiac and dialysis centers, and over 83,000 visits to pharmaceutical facilities).
MOH confirmed that its daily awareness-raising inspection tours have been intensified since the beginning of last February with the aim of raising the level of the health institutions’ commitment to the preventive measures to fight COVID-19, including wearing a face mask, practicing social distancing, implementing the health instructions and the health practice mechanism and maintaining patient safety. It pointed out that the tasks of the compliance team, an affiliate of the Compliance Assistant Agency, have been expanded to include quarantine across the Kingdom, in parallel with intensifying inspection tours to MOH’s hospitals to ensure their commitment to health instructions, specimens transport mechanism, screening health workers and practitioners, halting routine operations and avoiding overcrowding in hospitals to prevent infection transmission.
At the same time, the compliance teams continue their inspection visits to the private health facilities, including hundreds of daily visits to pharmacies to ensure commitment to instructions and availability of face masks, personal protection materials, basic medical preparations, and price control in cooperation with the competent authorities, it added.
MOH revealed that more than 7,000 violations were found and referred to the Violations Committees. Furthermore, over 200 closures were implemented. Most of those closures are precautionary until the violations are corrected. Many of those institutions are allowed to resume their activity after correcting the violations, with regular financial fines issued against them to make sure such breaches do not occur again.
MOH urged health care providers to adhere to the health requirements stipulated in the health regulations, alongside the preventive measures adopted in the Kingdom. This comes to preserve the safety of patients and avoid penalties that could amount to a fine of SAR 300,000, closure of the facility, and withdrawing the license of the health institution and practitioners for up to two years.