SCH issued the Qatar N ational Health Accounts Report 2011

Doha, July 29 (QNA) - The Supreme Council of Health (SCH) issued the second Qatar National Health Accounts Report 2011 "NHA" under the theme: "A Trend with New Classification". H.E. Abdulla bin Khalid Al Qahtani, Minister of Health and Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Health, expressed his pleasure to release of that Report as the first of its kind in the GCC region. Now, Qatar is releasing its second NHA Report, which is the first of its kind in the world. The Report applies the new classification system adopted by the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Statistical Office of the European Union "Eurostat". H.E. stressed that the SCH decided to use the new classification system because it believes that decisions have to based on evidence. This new system provides an advanced perspective for the health accounts frameworks, and a description of health expenditure. This is why Qatar decided to adopt this system as it allows the decision makers, and the other competent parties, obtain a more accurate description of the health sector role within the State s overall economy. He pointed that this Report, prepared by the General Directorate for Policy Affairs at the SCH, added new in depth information regarding the health financing details. Moreover, this detailed information helps in answering three additional questions: who benefitied from the current helth expenditures? What are the aspects of health sector investments? And what are the production inputs used to provide the health services? H.E. the Minister indicated that the State of Qatar is going through a fast development phase. Health expenditue amounted to QR 12.1 billion, i.e with an increase of 27% between 2010 and 2011. The State funded 77% of this expenditure, which reflects the Government commitment to develop and improve the country s population. At the end of his statement H.E. the minister extended his thanks and appreciation to all those who contributed to this scheme which was the result of the successful and dedicated efforts for two years. For his part, Dr. Faleh M. Ali, Assistant Secretary General for Policy Affairs at the SCH, said that the health developments which the State of Qatar is witnessing require the understanding of the financial dimensions of the health expenditures, and any changes in these dimensions. He added that SCH continues to implement the NHA, with its new classification, to help policy makers in drawing up the key objectives, as the healthcare systems all over the world are growing fast since the issue of the first classification in 2000. Innovations in the fields of pharmaceuticals and medical tehknologies were the moving force behind such developments and changes. This, in turn, led to seriously address the high cost of healthcare by the policy makers, analysts and the general public. Dr. Faleh mentioned that the SCH assumed managing the major part of the public sector s share amounting to 94%, while the other governmental bodies attended to the remaining 6%. He added that the distribution of expenditure on healthcare among the providers of the healthcare serviceswas: 57% for hospitals, 14% for outpatient clinics, 8% for the healthcare management and financing system and 21% for the other service providers. He also pointed out that the new classification distributed the QR 12 billion to 82% as current expenditure and 18% as capital expenditure. He continued that as for services rendered against the current expenditure: 40% went for healthcare services of in-patient, long stay and rhabilitation patients, 30% for outpatient and day care services, and 10% for ancillary services. As for the capital expenditure amounting to QR 2122 million, 74% was allocated for infrastructure and 26 % for equipment. Dr. Faleh indicated that the Report has given some important results. The first of them is that Qatar increase in healthcare expenditure was one of the highest in the world, especially when considering the austerity measures adopted by most countries. The second is that the Qatari government has been the main financer of the healthcare services reflecting its commitment to improve these services. He also added that despite the decrease in the direct expenditure of households on healthcare from 16% to 13.8% between 2010 and 2011, the overall value increased from QR 1550 million to QR 1665 million. He expects this trend to continue until the full application of the social healthcare insurance system. The opening of the new hospitals, and the contiuous shift of the primary healthcare services are expected to close the gap in the provision of the healthcare services and the resulting decrease in the expenditure of the overall value, particularly in the specialized services. Dr. Faleh added that the results arrived at by the call for developing the right regulations and controls to correct the health sector that will guarantee the balance of the health services in hospitals. This is in addition to the financing policies capable of enhancing the primary healthcare services as determined in the National Health Strategy 2011-2016; besides further economic studies to ensure that the provided services meet the needs of the population. Dr. Faleh praised the improvement in the collection and quality of data provided by the competent stakeholder calling for more efforts in this regard, and even make data collection mandatory in the future national healthcare accounts. Altijani Hussein, Manager of Health Economics, considered the Report as a document containing additional information which has not been available before. He expects the use of Qatar data for comparison with that of other countries which will adopt this new classification. The current healthcare in Qatar amounting to QR9966 has been absorbed by inputs like staff and other compensations (63%), materials and services (26%), treatment abroad (9%) and others (2%). An important aspect of this classification is that it determines some characteristics of the beneficiaries from the total current expenditure. Males benefited by 53%, and females by 47%. As for the age groups, the category from newly born to 14 years got 18% of the expenditure, the age group 15-64 got 74% and 65+ got 8%. The Manager of Health Economics pointed to the noticeable increase in the per capit health expenditure between 2010-2011 from USD1561 to 1920, which puts Qatar at the top of the 22 Middle East countries, including the six GCC countries. Mr. Altijani explained that the SCH, within the context of producing this report, administered a second Online Health Survey (OHS) in 2011 to evaluate the population s health utilization and health expenditure. Data was collected in the same way as in 2010 but over a four month period to allow for the level of variation in expenditure on health.He added that the main results obtained from that survey was the utilization percentage of the healthcare system in both the public and private sectors, percentages of patient clinic visits and the number and reasons of these visits. This is in addition of the patients satisfaction of the provided. The results showed that the distribution of the respondents by nationality reflected to a great extent with the true population structure in the State of Qatar.(QNA)