Officials are working to overcome problems of poor services in 22 hospitals and fraudulent qualifications among medical staff throughout the Kingdom. An undercover team found the service-related shortcomings in government and private hospitals, which led the Ministry of Health, represented by the directorates of Health Affairs, to issue stern warnings to the hospitals, sources told Okaz/Saudi Gazette. The hospitals lacked the quality program approved by Saudi Arabian Standards Organization, said the sources, who added the report was prepared after two months of field work. During the last eight years, the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties has detected 1,073 forgeries in 17 specialties; 742 cases, 69 percent, were in private hospitals and 331 cases, 31 percent, were in government hospitals, according to reports obtained by Okaz/Saudi Gazette. There were 22 doctors in government hospitals and 34 in private hospitals who were found to have been involved in forging documents related to their qualifications and education, the reports said. The field of nursing had the highest number of forgery cases, 326; 191 were in private hospitals and 135 were in government hospitals. There have been 306 cases in pharmacology, 285 in private hospitals and 21 in government hospitals. Other cases included personnel working in the fields of surgery, cardiology and prosthetics, and radiologists, physiotherapists, opticians and technicians. __
