The minister was making the opening remarks at the Third Consultancy Meeting of the Ministry of Health, (MOH) held in Yanbu yesterday. Besides health directors and health officials, Dr. Mansour bin Nasser Hawasi, deputy minister for health affairs, and Dr. Mohammed Al-Khoshaim, deputy minister for planning and development, were also present at the meeting sponsored by the Ministry of Health.
Speaking further, Al-Rabeeah said Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah strongly believes in consultation and dialogue as laid out in the religion of Islam.
“Exchanging experiences with colleagues and drawing up scientific plans will help people forge ahead to learn from their mistakes and take up new challenges successfully,” the minister said, adding that the ultimate beneficiaries of such initiatives will be patients.
Al-Rabeeah said the restructuring program introduced recently by the ministry in line with the policy of King Abdullah has been well received by those keen to offer better health services throughout the Kingdom. These transformations are taking place to keep abreast of global developments in the fields of public health and preventive medicine. Such programs would eventually yield better services to the beneficiaries, the minister said.
The new organizational structure of the MOH was designed to offer optimum services to the people and enhance the quality and magnitude of services rendered by the ministry through its health officials under its “Patients First” program.
The ministry underwent its first structural program 28 years ago. The new structure was developed by the Ministerial Committee for Administrative Organization under the guidance of the health minister.
The minister also thanked the officials responsible for the successful implementation of health projects in all parts of the Kingdom.
Al-Khoshaim said the ministry has been successfully implementing scientific methods to offer the best healthcare services to the people.
“We have deployed a method to listen to the people and chalk out future plans based on their constructive suggestions which could benefit a greater number of patients.”
He pointed out that arrangements have been made to give the best services to patients whether they are in or outpatients.
The deputy minister said the ministry had introduced a new electronic system to track medical mistakes committed by both medics and paramedics. “Such messages are transferred electronically from the hospital to the ministry headquarters automatically.”
He said the ministry also devised a method to find out the reasons for deaths during surgeries performed in government hospitals. Plans are underway, he said, to set up 49 clinical indicators to monitor 90 hospitals that come under the Ministry of Health.
Al-Hoshaim said the ministry is in the process of introducing the Australian ICD-10 coding system that would facilitate the hospital staff to record diseases under the system easily. He said the system was introduced in 16 hospitals and has increased productivity of the operation theater by 25 percent.
