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The Kingdom has already delivered on many of the 2025 targets it had set for the local healthcare sector, including receiving patient evaluations, raising users satisfaction rates, providing basic medical services to the majority of the population, and lowering traffic fatalities, according to the health sector transformation program annual report (pdf).
Key KPIs:
- Around 96.4% of the population is currently covered by basic health care services, including in remote areas. This exceeds the 88% target set for the year 2025;
- The Kingdom currently has 733 nursing staff for every 100k people, a little behind the 738 target for 2023;
- The average human life expectancy in the Kingdom stood at 77.6 years by the end of 2023;
- Users of the national population health platform (Sehhaty) rose 15% y-o-y to 30 mn in 2023, with 1.6 mn virtual consultation, and 9.2 mn virtual appointments;
- Adherence to newborn testing procedures in public hospitals rose to 94.3% in 2023, up from 63% in 2022. In private sector hospitals, that figure rose to 84% in 2023, up from just 7% in 2022.
Evaluation + satisfaction metrics: Some 82% of healthcare service beneficiaries evaluated the services they received by primary health care centers. The Kingdom had set a target of 81.2% in 2023 and 81.7% for 2025. Meanwhile, 87.5% of all healthcare patients reported their satisfaction with the services they had received during hospitalization, coming in just above the 2025 target of 85.8%.
ALSO- The number of pharmacies affiliated with the Online Drug Track and Trace System (RSD) grew 13% y-o-y to 11.1k in 2023. RSD is a platform sponsored by the Saudi Food and Drug Authority to track the availability of local and imported pharma products which aims to enhance oversight and ensure drug safety, by identifying and documenting the source and movements of each drug before it reaches patients.
REMEMBER- US investors are eyeing the sector: Healthcare is a major focus for US investors in Saudi, with a specific focus on R&D, biopharma, and medtech, Vice President and Deputy Head for the Middle East, Central Asia, and Türkiye at the US Chamber of Commerce Steve Lutes told us earlier this month. Meanwhile, there’s room for a closer look into how we can make the sector more attractive for investments, especially considering things like the Personal Data Protection Law and how it could impact investors’ ability to leverage data in operations and research, he added. Lutes also highlighted the need to look at how offset requirements prompted concerns about their application, and feasibility in the sector.
