Saturday, 5 March 2016

Privatization will help bring in more state-of-the-art services

JEDDAH: Major global renal care provider Diaverum participated in the Jeddah Economic Forum (JEF) on Thursday, which was centered on public-private partnerships (PPPs).
Dag Andersson, president and CEO of Diaverum, was among the participants of a panel session discussing the state of PPP projects in the health care sector.
The Kingdom has turned to privatization in order to bring health care to its remote areas, thus improving the availability and quality of state-of-the-art services for the benefit of patients.
In 2013, Diaverum was awarded a five-year contract from the Ministry of Health (MOH) to care for 5,000 renal patients across the Kingdom and has since opened 15 clinics, including in Madinah, Riyadh, Taif, Jeddah, Baish, Buraidah, Dammam, Hafer Al-Batin, Khamis Mushayit, Najran, Onizah, and Qunfudah.
Diaverum is stated to be the first foreign health care provider in Saudi Arabia working in partnership with the MOH to safeguard renal capacity and excellence in medical quality for several thousand patients suffering from renal failure.
During the panel at Jeddah Economic Forum, Dag Andersson, president and CEO of the Diaverum Group, underlined Diaverum’s unequivocal commitment to the Kingdom. “Diaverum is known for developing sustainable and coordinated solutions that create value for patients and health care systems. As a company, we are large enough to gain experience from more than 4 million dialysis treatments per year, yet small enough for an individual approach,” he said.
“We are pleased to support the Saudi government in its mission to provide universal access to quality health care across the Kingdom and have ambitious growth plans, which further accentuate our commitment to bringing long-term added value,” he added. 
“We want to make the Kingdom our biggest market globally by 2018 to address the growing need for renal care services,” he said.
The renal care expert plans to operate up to 30 clinics by the end of 2016 and invest over SR500 million in critical medical infrastructure over the next 5 years.
He added: “We strongly believe that our patient-centric services and the care we deliver make a difference for our currently 1,600 patients. We want to empower them to lead as normal a life as possible and we are looking forward to welcoming more patients to our clinics in the time to come. We have set ambitious medical targets for all our centers together with the Ministry of Health and our ambition is not only to meet, but exceed the targets. Improved medical outcomes not only benefit the patients, but also the health system through reduced hospitalization and need for other medical services.”
It is estimated that currently 9 percent of the Saudi population suffers from chronic kidney disease, which may ultimately lead to a need for regular dialysis treatment and is a serious condition that requires the cutting-edge technology and specialist care. On average, the number of these patients is growing by 10 percent annually.
Diaverum brings over 20 years of renal care expertise as well as world-class clinical research that will allow the MOH, in the long term, to take big steps toward reducing the risk of chronic disease through prevention.
JEF was first held in 1999 and since then has become an annual event where government leaders, business executives, and leading thinkers come together to discuss solutions to regional and international social and economic concerns.

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