Owners of private hospitals and clinics have complained that the Saudi Commission for the Medical Majors has again delayed the issuance of their temporary operation licenses, running their business at a slow pace. They accused the Commission of putting a stumbling block on the road of development to open new medical centers and hospitals in the Kingdom, which would eventually boost the infrastructure of the country. But despite such claims, the Ministry of Health has been relentlessly working to ease procedures of opening up more new private hospitals and clinics with only qualified staff, said Dr. Hisham Nadira, Director of the Health Affairs Department in Riyadh. The Saudi Commission for the Medical Majors has engaged in negotiations with the Riyadh Health Department to bring more certified and qualified physicians from outside the Kingdom by the end of the summer, he said. The concerns about qualified professional staff are pressing ones to avoid the plague of medical errors that have almost marked every government hospital. Earlier this week, Minister of Health Hamad Al-Manea, however, said the Kingdom does not have the highest rate of medical errors in the world, demanding statistical proof to support the claims that reportedly circulated the media. But the Saudization program of medical professions seems to have fallen short of expectations, forcing the country to go for workforce search outside its borders. The percentage of Saudization at private hospitals and clinics doesn't exceed 15 percent, crushing down an earlier expected ambitious 35 percent, said Ali Al-Hamza, head of a sub-committee of the Saudi Commission for the Medical Majors. Family members of physicians recruited to the Kingdom will be granted automatic visas, he reiterated. Private hospital and clinics owners lashed out at the Ministry of Health for not allowing their businesses to stand on equal footing with government hospitals to conduct pre-marital screening. The question to ask before allowing private hospitals and clinics to do premarital test is whether they have successfully conducted these tests in the past, Nadira said. The Ministry of Health has allocated an annual SR100 million for premarital tests of hereditary blood diseases, AIDS and Hepatitis. The cost of previous tests done throughout the past period is estimated at SR360 million. The periodical inspection visits every three months of the private hospitals come to ensure the quality management of these private medical entities and to develop self-monitoring mechanism, which is known to be an international standard the ministry hopes to see it implemented in the Kingdom's hospitals and clinics, he said. Okaz __
