Saudi Arabia Healthcare

The healthcare sector is a priority for the Saudi Arabian Government (SAG) as it is the largest share of state budget allocations. This has led to significant progress over the past decades. Through the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 strategy, Saudi Arabia seeks to strengthen its standards and quality of medical and healthcare services through projects led by public-private partnerships (PPP).

The Vision 2030 strategy envisions increased private sector participation in the healthcare sector. This would be achieved by the privatization of public healthcare assets and the advancement of private sector investment in the healthcare industry.  The transition to a PPP model will allow the SAG to refocus its efforts on regulatory and policy-related matters while bringing in additional revenue to support major projects like medical cities. 

The Ministry of Health (MoH) will move toward a pure regulator role and the future provision of health services will be provided by “accountable care organizations” or “clusters” within a corporatized structure (i.e. the “clusters” will provide the clinical services). Certain provision is expected to be included in project agreements at the outset to protect the participants from the ongoing changes, including a possible transfer of the MoH’s rights and obligations under the project agreement to the respective “cluster” once established and the terms on which such transfer would take place.

The MoH announced the launch of the Alansar Hospital as the first project open to private sector bidding. Alansar Hospital is the first PPP project to be launched under the “Establishing and Operating Hospitals PPP Initiative” under the Privatization Program under the Vision 2030 strategy.

For more information, please contact Khalid Khan, Commercial Specialist at Khalid.Khan@trade.gov