The Saudi government has been intrigued by its neighbor’s visionary economic dev

The Saudi government has been intrigued by its neighbor’s visionary economic development policies and examined their economic and development path closely. Most GCC countries had visionary policies in place at the time—Oman already had Vision 2020 and was working on Vision 2040; the UAE, Bahrain, as well as Kuwait each had Vision 2030; and Qatar had a National Vision 2020 for sustainable development. Development agencies emphasized and espoused that Saudi Arabia must follow the steps to “diversify the economy, build infrastructure and eventually move to a knowledge society(Rahman, 2020).
The Ministry of Health (MOH) and other governmental agencies such as the Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Education, and Ministry of the National Guard are currently the major healthcare providers in Saudi Arabia, accounting for approximately 80% of total services provided nationwide. The MOH alone is responsible for approximately 60% of all services. All curative services, including primary, secondary, and tertiary care, rehabilitative services, home healthcare, and long-term care, are provided by the MOH or other government healthcare providers(Alkhamis, 2017).
Saudi Arabia’s constitution establishes health care as a fundamental right. To provide free health services to its citizens, the public health system and the Ministry of Health (MOH) were established in 1925 and 1949, respectively. Since its inception, the Kingdom has accompanied social policy and provided health care to everyone. This resulted in better population health when compared to other countries, including those in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The public sector provided free health care to the Saudi people without the need for additional financial support from oil revenues. Various development projects have been successfully implemented by the government over the last few decades(Rahman, 2020).
According to AlMubarak et al. (2021) Furthermore, the findings of the study are limited to one public hospital and cannot be generalized to other hospitals. However, providing context – specific description helped contribute to the study’s generalizability, allowing informed decisions about the study’s findings’ applicability to other situations. The recognition of such constraints highlights potential areas for future research, that would be required to investigate the impact of privatization on a variety of hospital and main health care centers, as well as a variety of health, social, and financial indicators. It is also necessary to investigate how accountability is operationalized and enforced in situations where it has never been implemented. It would also be critical to capture the viewpoints of the private industry. The valuable lessons from this research study can be utilized to guide the next stages of execution and can be transmitted to other health facilities that will be undergoing similar changes. Policymakers will be able to make better decisions if they understand how stakeholders perceive privatization. Finally, the findings show how different actors construct various meanings of the same reform. As a result, researchers are urged to identify the difference among various stakeholder groups and attempt to comprehend the underlying assumptions underlying any identified differences.
References
Alkhamis, A. A. (2017). Critical analysis and review of the literature on healthcare privatization and its association with access to medical care in Saudi Arabia. Journal of Infection and Public Health, 10(3), 258–268. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jiph.2017.02.014
AlMubarak, S. H., Alfayez, A. S., Alanazi, A. T., Alwuhaimed, L. A., & Bo Hamed, S. S. (2021). Autonomy, accountability, and competition: The privatisation of the Saudi health care system. Journal of Taibah University Medical Sciences, 16(2), 144–151. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtumed.2020.11.005
Rahman, R. (2020). The Privatization of Health Care System in Saudi Arabia. Health Services Insights, 13, 1178632920934497. https://doi.org/10.1177/1178632920934497