As part of the ongoing Private Sector Participation Program, the Ministry of Health (MoH) decided to conduct this needs assessment & capacity planning study to launch a pilot project for the primary health care (PHC) initiative.
In order to assist the MoH to determine the need for primary healthcare services, and evaluate the current situation of the PHC centers, we conducted an extensive field visit. This field study comprised 57 PHC center visits; of which 23 were in Riyadh, 10 were in the Eastern Region, 20 were in Jeddah and the final 4 were in Makkah. During these visits, more than 200 data points were collected from each PHC center to evaluate the current situation in terms of available human resources, equipment, and facilities. With the collected data various quantitative and qualitative analyses (e.g., supply-demand gap analysis and benchmarking) were made to determine redundancies and underutilized services as well as the effective catchment areas for each PHC center.
The deliverables of the project included 53 facility reports that contain the functional and operational evaluation of each center. Furthermore, we provided a needs assessment report that includes the optimal scope of services for the existing PHC centers and planned Mega Centers, capacity building recommendations, and a renovation or a rebuilding plan for the visited facilities.
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Ministry of Health
2018
The recommendations that are provided during the needs assessment study supported the launching of the pilot project. Immediately after the completion of the project, PHC centers in the pilot areas were started to be renovated or rebuilt to be more patient-centered, and resources were re-allocated to effectively respond to the needs of people in each catchment area.
