Vivek Shukla, interim chief commercial officer at SEHA (Abu Dhabi Health Services company), laid out the three key phases in the transformation of Saudi Arabia’s health care sector at a webinar HBI hosted entitled ‘Saudi Health Transformation – The Real Opportunity’ last week.

HBI members can access a recording of the session here (please make sure you are logged in to access).

The first phase is now more or less complete. This primarily involved the government laying the groundwork for transforming the health care by establishing a new payor system and the creation of 20 regional clusters.

Phase 2 is where things get really interesting for private operators. In this phase, which has been on-going since 2021, the 20 clusters are transformed into Accountable Care Organisations (ACOs), which have the ability to subcontract work from private operators.

In total there are around 70 planned health care projects in Saudi Arabia, of which about 44% are private sector projects. Shukla presented a list of 12 private sector projects which are currently being executed, most of which are in the country’s two biggest cities, Riyadh and Jeddah:

For a break down of upcoming projects by facility type see last week’s infographic.