Private hospitals and clinics have adopted a method to circumvent the Ministry of Health decision to cancel fees for opening files by raising the fee of general medical examinations, steam sessions and the doctor’s fees, which sometimes reaches SR250. Others have raised the price of X-rays and some services.

Some patients who fell prey to this practice said reasons behind this circumvention are bad control, and weak follow-up of implementing decisions which were issued by officials against various entities. Violators said the decision is one sided, they added that it was not accurately detailed, and didn’t define the rights of patients and medical centers at the same time.

Mohammad Al-Khalaf accused some medical establishments that are not implementing the decision by saying that they started taking fees for opening a file under medical examiner’s fees. He said they used to open a file for SR25, and examination fee for SR50, now opening a file is free, but fee for a medical checkup is SR75.

Ahmad bin Daram described the decision as sterile, and wished it was not issued in the first place, because canceling the file fees led to raising medical examination fees. He called for exercising control and closing the gaps in the recent decision.

Saad Al-Shalawi said patient’s health doesn’t concern clinics because they are only interested in accumulating profits. “File opening fees still exist in one of the clinics I visited, because they demanded SR200. I was refused an injection because they claimed I didn’t have a medical prescription,” he said.

An employee who works in a clinic said the Ministry of Health decision which included the cancelation of file opening fees has been activated.

She said this forced the administration to review checkup prices. She added that the fees for a medical checkup with a specialist has gone up from SR100 to SR150. Fees for seeing consultants have been raised from SR 150 to SR200.

Another clinic employee said the fee for a general medical checkup or a steam session was SR 50, following the decision the fees have gone up to SR85, or SR77.