RIYADH, 17 April — The draft of the guidelines to be followed by health insurance companies in the Kingdom will be announced soon. The uniform standards will simplify the implementation of the cooperative health insurance scheme that is expected to be introduced shortly.
Thirteen insurance companies, representing 90 percent of the health insurance sector and 200 hospitals and medical centers, have agreed to the draft norms and guidelines, said Saleh Naser Al-Omair, director general of the National Company for Cooperative Insurance.
The norms will be binding on all insurance companies and hospitals serving in the health insurance field.
The new regulations will solve the problems arising from the absence of uniform procedures in the services offered by various companies and hospitals in the insurance sector, Al-Omair added.
The draft regulations of the cooperative health insurance, which is currently being studied by the Council of Ministers, will be applied on all expatriate workers and their families in three phases.
In the first phase, the companies that employ 500 or more expatriate employees will implement the cooperative insurance scheme for their expatriate staff. In the next phase, the scheme will be applied to the expatriate employees in companies which employ more than 100 foreigners, while in the third stage it will be implemented by all companies and for all domestic workers. The Saudi employees will come under the scheme only three years after it has been fully implemented for expatriates.
The Ministry of Health supports the draft for standardized norms in the insurance sector. The ministry considers that the norms would be a great help to the massive task of implementing the health insurance to millions, said Al-Omair.
An eight-member committee representing hospitals, insurance companies, the Council of Health Insurance and the General Organization for Social Insurance has been tasked with the study, approval and implementation of them on a national level.
