Main challenges facing the healthcare sector in Saudi Arabia

Dr. Mahmoud A. Al Yamany, CEO of King Fahad Medical City talks about the main challenges facing the healthcare sector in Saudi Arabia.

Despite the global environment of lower oil prices, the Kingdom has maintained a high level of spending in the 2016 fiscal budget. Education and healthcare remain the focus of government spending, accounting for 35 percent of total spending. However, Health and Social Development dropped by a sizable 34 percent year-on-year to SR105 billion. What do you identify as the main challenges facing the healthcare sector in Saudi Arabia?

It was always thus, as the challenges with healthcare are with the workforce and finding the right, qualified talent. That has always been the main challenge. The next challenge is providing service at an efficient level. One of the things that the Saudi Arabian healthcare sector has suffered from for years is inefficiency.

The main problem with healthcare is that there is no congruent, overarching healthcare development strategy at a national level. The spending is rather erratic. We have managed to increase and improve the quality of the services provided but we have not been able to manage the efficiency to a sufficient degree.

The increase in the expenditures in healthcare has been dramatically higher over the past decade, from about 3% of GDP to about 7% of GDP. That is significant; if we continue on that path soon enough we will be getting up-to the 15% or even 20% level and that would be a huge burden for the government.