Qatar’s healthcare system is set for major overhaul

An  Ebn Sina Medical outlet: Ebn Sina Medical, an Aamal company, plans to construct in Doha’s Industrial Area the most advanced warehousing for pharmaceuticals.

By Samy Hanna and Sherif Shehata /Doha

Qatar’s healthcare system is changing dramatically.  The past decade has seen a rapid rise in standards but over the next few years the whole system will be transformed. 

The National Health Insurance Company has just announced the start of the first phase of the new compulsory insurance programme. Looked at more broadly, the whole healthcare system will grow quickly measured by budget and the number of facilities, improve in quality, open up to more competition from the private sector and offer patients a host of new or improved services.

Few countries have attempted so ambitious an overhaul of their healthcare. While many of these improvements will be visible, one of the keys to success will be less obvious: sophisticated management of information about the system and the people who use it.

Plans for transforming the nation’s healthcare have their roots in the Qatar National Vision 2030 and its Human Development Pillar. The Qatar National Health Strategy 2011-2016 is designed to ensure that the population will enjoy world-class treatment.

Irrespective of the overall aim, however, the system would have to expand to meet the demand of a population which includes diverse nationalities and may double to 4mn by the end of this decade.

The more immediate catalyst for change in healthcare provision is the Social National Health Insurance scheme. It will have three fundamental consequences for healthcare provision in Qatar: giving the whole population access to first-class healthcare; increasing the quality and range of that care; and introducing more competition from private providers, which will increase the choices available to patients. In the longer term, a primary goal is to increase prevention and awareness.

 At the moment, the public sector dominates healthcare provision, which can vary according to location and the type of care the patient needs. According to the Supreme Council of Health annual report 2012, no less than nine new hospitals and 18 new Primary Health Centres are to be built across Qatar between 2013 and 2021 to achieve greater consistency of geographical coverage and service provision in this fundamentally important part of the healthcare system.

Simultaneously, the range of services will become much broader. We are likely to see more outpatient treatment centres, greater specialisation in areas such as oncology, cardiology and geriatric surgery, and maybe as the system evolves a greater emphasis on homecare.

All this will be matched by the supply of the most advanced drugs and highly sophisticated operating rooms.

But the crucial element in many ways will be competition and choice. The health insurance scheme will enable patients to decide for themselves, to a much greater degree than now, where they want to have treatment and from whom.

Government provision, mainly through Hamad Medical Corporation, will continue to be the major part of the system for the foreseeable future. Many different private sector providers can also be expected to emerge, however, from full-service hospitals to specialists and suppliers of essential treatments such as drugs. 

A case in point is the joint venture established earlier this year between Aamal and Vivantes, the biggest hospital group in Germany, to build an outpatient clinic in Doha.

Establishing and maintaining the highest standards is fundamental to the government’s vision for Qatar’s healthcare. Information will be crucial to success.

At the top level, Qatar plans to have a single health information system so that whenever and wherever in the country you need treatment your medical profile will be available. Such a system will also help policy makers to build up a more accurate picture the healthcare system and manage budgets and care provision more effectively.

Improving provision and ensuring value for money will also require more automation at the point of healthcare provision. 

A hospital information pilot study is under way in Qatar with a view to having such a system up and running in 2015. Digital operating rooms will give medical staff fast and accurate information on patients and procedures.

Aamal Medical has introduced the first robotic pharmacy system which reduces errors in supplying drugs and speeds up their distribution.  Ebn Sina Medical, another Aamal company, will start to construct in the Industrial Area the most advanced warehousing for pharmaceuticals.

Initiatives such as these build on the advances already made in Qatar’s healthcare. But information will be critical to transforming the system successfully.

A major criterion for judging the progress of the country’s healthcare system will be how well it manages information to improve provision and, fundamentally, benefit patients.

*Samy Hanna is deputy general manager of Ebn Sina Medical and Sherif Shehata is general manager of Aamal Medical.