Capital leads in health services

The Capital Governorate has 78 per cent of all private hospital beds, 55pc of medical centres and 68pc of all clinics in the Kingdom, according to a National Health Regulatory Agency (NHRA) report. The report, which sheds light on the healthcare sector in the Kingdom, showed that more medical complaints were filed against private hospitals than public hospitals in Bahrain.

Close to 60 per cent of the medical complaints filed with NHRA against healthcare facilities involved private facilities, according to official figures. Only 42pc was against the public sector, according to NHRA. The authority received a total of 237 cases, 136 of which were complaints from the public, 47 were reports from healthcare facilities, two were NHRA internal references, and 52 lawsuits from judicial authorities.

The report says 66pc of the complaints were against doctors while 14pc were against healthcare facilities. “The NHRA received 237 complaints in 2017, of which 136 were direct complaints from patients and 47 were incidents reported by health facilities. There were also 52 cases which were referred by the prosecution and the courts. “The NHRA has completed the investigation into 118 cases of which medical error was proved in only 44 of them.” The report carried infographics to demonstrate complaint, incidents and lawsuit cases statistics in 2017.

The report said that 85 complaints were against doctors, five against nurses, five against pharmacists, 33 against health care facilities and the rest against others. Dentistry was the speciality that received the most number of complaints while in terms of lawsuits both dentistry and general practice were the highest recipients. In 2017, a total of 66 disciplinary decisions were issued by disciplinary committees at NHRA.

This includes 47 against doctors, 15 against nurses and one against health professional, two against pharmacists and one against a health facility. The action taken by NHRA includes 34 suspensions, 21 written warnings issued, 10 licences cancelled and one financial penalty