AMMAN — Health
waste caused by a fragmented and mismanaged health sector hiked spending to a
level exceeding 8 percent of the gross domestic product annual, said the head
of the
Amman Group for Future Dialogues, Bilal Al-Tal.
اضافة اعلان
Tal’s comment came
during a press conference entitled “Announcing the Study of Waste in the
Jordanian Health Sector”.
The study stated
that the percentage is likely to increase, if the waste continues without a
solution in the offing.
The study showed
that the size of the waste is partly due a fragmented health sector, which is
seen as depriving many Jordanians of satisfactory healthcare services.
Tal pointed out
that waste causes an “injustice and imbalance in providing equal health care
services to all citizens, because some of those who pay nothing, often benefit
from the system”. He attributed the shortcoming on oversight, and the absence
of the rule of law.
The rapporteur of
the group’s health team, Mohammad Rasoul Al-Tarawneh, told
Jordan News that the study showed that the “multiplicity of different health insurance
programs makes the general framework of Jordanian health insurance
ineffective”.
He confirmed that
the study stated that a large percentage of the insured have coverage from more
than one health insurance company.
“As for uninsured
Jordanians, they receive a subsidized price estimated at 20 percent of the cost
in exchange for specific inpatient and outpatient services in the facilities of
the Ministry of Health, or they bear the cost of health care,” he said.
The study also
pointed to a “waste” in health cadres resulting from mismanagement. He
explained that human resources are managed in a haphazard manner, which results
in poor productivity and inefficiency, low quality service, high operational
costs, and little competitiveness.
Tarawneh said
that the study stated that one of the causes of waste is the lack of, or weak
application of legislation and policies regulating the work of health cadres,
and the imbalance of health education outcomes between supply and demand.
General Surgeon
Mohammad Daamsa said that health waste takes place in several forms, including
misdistribution of medicines and competencies, and a lack of good quality
health care service.
He told
Jordan
News that decrepit management in the health sector culminated in this
waste, whereas the patient feels the absence of adequate health care services.
He explained that
a doctor “gives little time to patients, a situation, which leads to forcing
the patient to undergo more laboratory tests, or taking more medication”.
Former minister
of health Mamdouh Al-Abbadi told
Jordan News that the biggest challenge
facing the health sector is the “weakness of the budget”.
Abbadi, who in
2017 headed a committee to rationize spending and comprehensively improve the
health sector, said: “After working on the plan for several months, it remained
as it is, without any action on the ground.”
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