According to the Chief Executive Officer, HAAD, Mr. Zaid Al Siksek, the past health care model failed to effectively help service patients due to lack of data or missing information.
The First Group quoted him as saying, “Very few data was available when we first started, and if it was there, it was weak or not valid. If you don‘t have the data on the health system, it would be almost impossible to collect and understand information. “Now, we are able to validate the need for health insurance coverage and spend on certain areas more than others, and can identify where there‘s a need to develop curative and public programmes,” Al Siksek said.
”Health insurance has helped in the way health care information is transferred and accessed, as well as created a form of affordability.
”We now know that our population is relatively young, with an average age of about 28 years, with 22 per cent of Emiratis diabetic (while) chronic diseases are staggering,” he said.
Even though the HAAD official refused to specify the amount spent in the past three years to help improve health care across the emirate, he did admit that spending on health care has increased since the authority‘s creation.
”There was a lot of health care expenditure the government had to take on, however spending is beginning to dip these days. We were going through an investment period focused on building a completely new health care system, with the vision of offering everyone full access to health care,” said Al Siksek.
When asked how the authority has managed to introduce reforms this fast, Al Siksek said, ”Through encouraging, enabling, and enforcing. As a health system regulator I start off by encouraging people to overcome the challenges they have.
“If they don‘t abide, we enable things ourselves, and finally governments need to enforce regulations, such as mandatory health insurance.”
He added, ”Through various partnerships we have managed to help transform some of our key public hospitals. However hospital‘s cannot be the jack of all trade, by doing everything and anything for a community of 2.2 million residents.”
With up to 85 to 90 per cent of health care professionals being expatriates, Al Siksek spoke about the importance of offering physicians with incentives.
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