Over 83% of hospitals in EP ‘not approved’ for practice

Over 83 percent of hospitals and medical facilities in the Eastern Province are not technically approved to practice medicine, local media reported, quoting data released by the Saudi Central Board for Accreditation of Healthcare Institutions (SCBAHI).
According to SCBAHI, only 12 government and privately-owned hospitals were technically approved, or 17 percent out of 72 hospitals operating in the region. On the other hand, 24 and 32 government and private hospitals, respectively, remained unapproved, the report said.
SCBAHI recently released a new and developed version of national standards for hospital accreditation that would apply as of January (2015).
The paper stated that those hospitals adopting such criteria and standards will provide better services and will have less medical errors than those unapproved medical facilities. The four government-run hospitals, which have been technically approved by the SCBAHI are: Khafji General Hospital, King Khalid Hospital (Hafr Al-Batin), Prince Saud bin Jalawi (Ahsa), and the Security Forces Hospital (Dammam).
Eight private medical facilities were also approved by the SCBAHI as follows: Mani Hospital (Ahsa), Mani Hospital (Jubail), Abdulaziz Al-Musa Hospital (Ahsa), Muwasa General Hospital (Qatif), Muwasa Hospital (Jubail), Al-Sadiq Hospital (Sihat), Yusuf Hospital (Alkhobar) and Tadawi Hospital (Dammam).
In a related case, the Committee of Medical Irregularities in the EP region has fined two private hospitals with SR200,000 for irregularities related to handling corona-virus cases. The committee said the facilities did not follow the proper guidelines approved by the Command and Control Center of the Ministry of Health, said Health Affairs Director General in the EP Dr. Khalid Al-Shaibani, told local media.




According to Al-Shaibani, the CCC team reported that the two private hospitals did not follow the anti-virus regulations nor reported the discovered corona-virus cases.