RIYADH, 5 August — Another government-run hospital will soon start providing specialized treatment to patients willing to pay. The King Khaled Eye Specialist Hospital in Riyadh also has plans to train ophthalmologists, physicians and technical personnel for private hospitals at a fee.
“We have received a directive from the minister of health in this regard and we shall be reporting back to him and the hospital’s board of directors with our plans in about two months,” Ahmad Al-Shammary, acting supervisor general and executive director of KKESH, told Arab News.
KKESH will be the second specialized government hospital after the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center to throw open its facilities to the private sector. The program will include coordination with those hospitals as well as supervision in training their staff or providing eye treatment. KKESH is the only hospital in the Middle East to be certified six times by the United States’ Joint Commission for International Accreditation.
Al-Shammary said under the new arrangements being worked out the hospital would treat normal eye diseases. At present, the hospital only attends to complicated cases. The hospital’s Short Stay Unit would handle such cases directly and those referred by private hospitals. The move was aimed at generating additional revenue for the hospital and ease pressure on the government’s budget.
Al-Shammary said KKESH has also been instructed by the minister of health to coordinate with hospitals in other parts of the Kingdom in setting up an outreach program for eye care — for both new and follow-up cases. Its medical outreach program currently operates in Jeddah and Madinah. Plans are afoot to extend it to five other cities in the Central, Eastern and Southern provinces.
Al-Shammary said the outreach program would work in both directions: the private hospitals could send their staff for training in Riyadh or let KKESH specialists conduct training programs in those hospitals. The duration of the program could range from one to three months, depending on requirement.
Another aspect of the outreach program would involve treatment of eye diseases under the specialist care of KKESH. Such an arrangement, he pointed out, would work out cheaper even for the hospital, since it would not have to hire any additional staff or go for specialized equipment in dealing with a particular case.
The KKESH executive also announced that the hospital would complete within four months a comprehensive project of setting up Intranet service as part of its LAN network. This would interconnect all the departments and further streamline its patient care services. Access to Internet would also be speeded up.
Asked about the major eye diseases treated at their hospital, Al-Shammary mentioned cataract, which accounts for about 70 percent of all the cases. He said the presence of an aging population in the Kingdom was a major factor for the growing incidence of cataract.
He said another common eye disease was glaucoma in which the patient gradually loses sight due to the build-up of pressure in the eyes. Glaucoma cases were also on the upswing due to the growing incidence of diabetes in the Kingdom. So also was retina plastoma, or eye cancer, which leads to blindness. “We are mounting an intensive campaign through schools and the media to create public awareness about the problem,” he added.
Private hospitals have voiced concern over allowing government-run health institutions to provide treatment by charging fees. They say that the move will trigger a price war that in turn will compromise on the quality of health care in the Kingdom.
They also argue that the move contravenes the government’s privatization drive at a time when the private sector is urged to play a more active role in the national economy.
A row involving KFSH and private hospitals in Jeddah has been simmering over the past few days with the latter totally rejecting the idea of government hospitals treating people ready to pay.
