Saudi health ministry launches programs to build patient-friendly relations

RIYADH: The Health Ministry has launched nationwide programs to build relations between health officials and patients.
The first such programs were held on Wednesday in Riyadh and Al-Jouf to build a patient-friendly environment in health facilities, a ministry official said.
The maiden programs were in the form of workshops that brought together patients and health officials.
The programs will enable health officials to get feedback from patients so they can improve services, the official said. The campaign will be extended to other regions.
The ministry is also implementing an e-program call Ehalati to unify and improve measures on patient referrals.
It also provides all the logistic and coordination-related requirements to refer the patient from one medical facility to another. In addition, the program provides an accurate archiving and statistical recording system, which contains information on the patients referred through the program to different health facilities across the Kingdom.
The program aims at unifying adopted measures on patient referrals among health facilities at all levels, as well as automatically referring the patient based only on the patient’s health situation and an objective medical opinion.