The State Audit Institution’s (SAI) Community Brief in the Annual Report 2022, released on Tuesday, highlighted several discrepancies in the practices of health professionals in both private and public sectors.
"It was noticed that private health establishments allowed visiting doctors to practice the medical profession and allied medical professions without obtaining licenses or with expired licenses — 19 such violations were detected against one private health establishment," the report said.
Repeated violations were also committed by some government doctors by practising in private health establishments without obtaining a license or practising with an expired license. As four violations and two warnings against one doctor were detected in one year, the Ministry of Health tried to enhance its human resources to monitor the work of doctors and assess their commitment to working hours. It was pointed out that there needed to be more specialised staff in following up on the data of visiting doctors working in private health establishments.
A number of 150 field visits for 1,600 institutions were carried out by only seven employees, with a coverage rate of nine per cent from January to July 2022.
MoH took a number of regulatory actions including issuing circulars to all private health establishments to comply with the systems, not permitting private practice by doctors during their official working hours, forming a working team to study and evaluate some specialisations in private health establishments to ensure their compliance with the ministry's specifications and requirements
Health establishments issued a number of 17,521 referrals under the Ministry of Health to outpatient clinics at Khoula Hospital, and 12,018 surgeries were not scheduled during the period from 2017 to 2021. Waiting periods have been scheduled, and names of surgical patients have been entered into a system whereby appointments are prioritised based on each case. Long waiting periods from the date of appointment arrangement to the actual date for meeting doctors in outpatient clinics and performing surgeries in Royal, Khoula, and Al Nahdha hospitals will be tackled on a priority basis. A team has been formed to work on developing mechanisms to reduce waiting periods in specialised clinics and diagnostic radiology, and develop a methodology to ensure the continued provision of such services in a timely manner. Another team has been formed to work on increasing the capacity of general and specialised surgeries.
Long waiting times for appointments scheduled to perform some types of radiology in both Royal and Khoula Hospitals were found, in addition to variations in some kinds of radiology and other diagnostic methods such as endoscopy. The ministry took several actions, including the introduction of a triage system in the Al Shifa Healthcare Information Management System to determine urgent and other cases and the conclusion of a financing agreement between the Royal Hospital and a private hospital for MRI scanning.
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