The «Support Offices» Program of the Ministry of Health (MOH) continues providing logistic services to special-needs, senior and home medicine patients, as from parking lots for persons with parking permits, through opening the medical record, getting appointments, moving around the health facility, to obtaining medical reports; to improve the delivery mechanism of services and enhance patient independence.
This program seeks to make all health facilities special-needs, senior and home medicine patients-friendly, to secure their highest independence by enabling them to adapt with their health environment requirements and developing their self-reliance capacity. This will make them productive members in the community.
In 2017, all support offices served 5,280 beneficiaries (with 8,028 services). Such services were provided in 6 regions through 10 hospitals (3 offices in Jeddah, 2 offices in the Eastern Region and Hafr Al-Batin, and one office in rest regions). These support offices served 2,563 persons with special-needs (with 3,295 services) and 2,243 senior people (with 3,295 services), in addition to 474 beneficiaries of home health care (with 576 services), thus providing 8,028 services. Most services were for mobility assistance, with 2,730 services, while 2,728 services for having appointments, and 46 services for sign language translation.
It is worth mentioning that this program targets three key groups, including: special-needs persons, with permanent or interim disabilities and who possess disability service cards from the local special-needs service coordination committee, senior people who are 65+ years of age, as well as home medicine patients who are classified under physically and mentally disabled persons, CPR, bedridden, chronic cardiac and palliative care patients.
The Support Offices feature a number of tasks, including: ensure that the health facility is ready to serve users on daily basis, help them move around the health facility, complete the processes of opening a health record, set appointments, coordinate between patients and the medical team, request reports, help persons with hearing disability communicate with the medical team, prepare service user-related stats, liaise with special-needs service coordination committee to obtain senior/disability low-fare cards and passes, liaise with concerned bodies to obtain assistive tools and priority cards to receive therapeutic services.