Dubai, May 21st, 2008 - As released at the end of April, the new Dubai Health Authority (DHA) will introduce a compulsory health insurance scheme for all local and expatriate employees working in the public and private sectors in Dubai. After a successful implementation for all public employees and their dependants on May 2nd 2008, the new scheme will be applied to the private sector in the very near future.
Although this new legislation will benefit most employees, it will also have a major impact on the healthcare industry in Dubai, as a survey conducted among 100 hospital professionals by naseba research reveals.
Dubai's major hospitals forecast that the quality of patient care will drastically decrease, due to the sudden rise in patient flow. 72% of surveyed hospitals predict that the number of patients will increase from 10 to 25% in the next 12 months and that the frequency of patients visits will also rise significantly. Mohd. Hamidur Rahman, the Director of Finance at Al Noor Hospital points out that "the traffic in Out Patient Departments (OPDs) will pose a major concern as more people may get curious for the slightest of illness symptoms, which in turn will affect the patient who really needs medication."
Even though 84% of major Dubai hospitals (especially multi-speciality hospitals) believed that they are well equipped to face the increase in both number and frequency of patients, the naseba research survey reveals however that serious staffing problems, already a major concern in the healthcare industry, will intensify. These perceived additional staff shortages will further impact on the quality of patient care.
A direct result will be that hospitals will have no choice, but to increase their investment in infrastructure and technology to cope with the expected increase in demand. "Higher investments will be required from the hospitals end to improve the infrastructure in order to accommodate the increased patient in-flow", explained Dr. Shanila Laiju, Operations Manager at Al Rafa Hospital.
"Any sudden rise in patient numbers relies on flexible infrastructure which is active to the application and passive to the data to facilitate workflow efficiencies. Timely access to accurate information can directly affect and impact patient throughput and if the hospital infrastructure is not built to cope with the retrieval and processing of data from multiple disparate sources then bottlenecks are inevitable. Scaling a hospital infrastructure via a service oriented design and the ability to cope with change on demand to provide flexibility is essential in today's fast moving healthcare market," commented Mark Clark, Director e-Health EMEA, Hitachi Data Systems.
Hospitals are also concerned that the new law has equal chances of being misused. Tracking the authenticity of claims will be a complicated process. Mohd. Hamidur Rahman, Director of Finance at Al Noor Hospital, explained that "Misuse or manipulation of the law will be a primary concern for the authorities. People may be tempted to pretend illness in order to get prescriptions and to claim benefits."
The third edition of the Healthcare Expansion Congress Mid-East, organized by naseba, will discuss the impact of the mandatory health insurance scheme on UAE hospitals and how hospitals are preparing to solve the anticipated new challenges. Experts will give recommendations to hospitals from GCC countries which are looking into implementing a similar law. The Healthcare Expansion Congress Mid-East, a leading platform of naseba Healthcare Expansion Series, is taking place on October 13th-14th, 2008 in Dubai. Over 200 buyers representing hospitals and health authorities throughout the Middle East will have the opportunity to meet up to 30 global industry suppliers.
www.healthcareexpansion.com
-Ends-
naseba research
naseba research, a naseba group entity, provides cutting edge business information by analyzing the latest industry trends through white papers, tech papers and articles. naseba research provides each market with industry specific surveys, reflecting on key figures, the experience of decision makers within the industry, and sourcing key opinions to provide comprehensive analysis and reports.
For more information, please contact:
Josephine Deniau
Communications Officer
+971 4 367 1376 / communications@naseba.com
© Press Release 2008
