Enhancing Healthcare Services in Saudi Arabia: Quality Improvement, Accessibility, and Patient-Centric Care

A major private hospital group in Saudi Arabia seeking to improve its service delivery quality and operational efficiency amid a changing healthcare landscape.

The hospital group faced rising competition after policies opened the sector to foreign players. Patients experienced long waits, and many processes were manual and slow. Demand for specialized chronic care was rising (non-communicable diseases account for ~70% of death, but the group’s services remained general. Staffing was imbalanced – some departments overworked, others underutilized. The client needed to streamline operations and refocus services to remain competitive and improve patient care.

We implemented a comprehensive service transformation program across the hospital group’s facilities. The solution encompassed operational process redesign and service line development. Operationally, we introduced Lean management principles to streamline patient flow – for example, reengineering the outpatient appointment and triage processes to cut wait times. We deployed a new digital queuing and scheduling system to manage patient appointments more efficiently and reduce congestion in waiting areas. For service enhancement, we guided the establishment of new specialty clinics focusing on prevalent chronic conditions (e.g. a Diabetes Care Center and a Cardiac Clinic) to better serve patients with NCDs. We also launched staff training and culture-change initiatives: for instance, customer service workshops for front-line staff and interdisciplinary team meetings to improve care coordination. Additionally, we recommended the pursuit of international accreditation (such as JCI) for the hospitals to benchmark and sustain high quality of care and patient safety practices.

We began with a detailed diagnostic of the group’s operations. Our consultants analyzed key metrics like patient wait times, length of stay, throughput, and satisfaction scores for each department. We also mapped out the patient journey for various services to identify bottlenecks (e.g. registration, laboratory turnaround, discharge procedures). Using this data, we worked closely with hospital management and staff in Kaizen workshops to redesign workflows – eliminating redundant steps, introducing parallel processing where possible, and implementing checklists for consistency. In parallel, a market needs assessment was performed to identify gaps in service offerings; this supported the introduction of the new specialty clinics addressing diseases with high prevalence. We piloted the redesigned processes in one hospital to test improvements (for example, a new ER triage protocol that significantly cut waiting times) and then scaled the successful changes across the network. Throughout the project, we engaged staff at all levels to gain buy-in – forming improvement committees in each hospital and celebrating quick wins to build momentum for change.

We provided targeted recommendations to enhance both efficiency and service scope. Key operational recommendations included: implementing a centralized appointment system across all facilities (so patients could be pre-scheduled and better distributed), setting up an electronic patient flow board in each hospital to track and manage patient progress in real time, and adjusting staffing schedules to match peak patient volumes (e.g. more nurses during evening clinic hours, when wait times were longest). We also recommended simplifying the admissions and discharge process – for instance, creating a discharge lounge and checklist to speed up patient discharge and free beds sooner. In terms of service offerings, we advised investing in preventive and chronic disease programs, such as patient education workshops and follow-up care plans, to complement the new specialty clinics. We suggested establishing partnerships or referral pathways with specialized centers for services the group didn’t provide (like advanced oncology), ensuring continuity of care for patients within the group’s ecosystem. To sustain high service quality, we recommended continuous monitoring of KPIs (wait times, patient satisfaction, readmission rates) and forming a small Operations Excellence team internally to drive ongoing improvements.

The service improvements had a swift and visible impact. Within the first year, average outpatient wait times in the pilot hospital dropped by more than 50% due to the new scheduling and triage processes. After scaling these changes, similar reductions were observed across the group – patients can now see physicians much faster, improving satisfaction. Patient satisfaction scores, measured via surveys, have risen significantly, reflecting better experiences. The new specialty clinics (e.g. the Diabetes Care Center) quickly reached high utilization and are improving patient outcomes (for instance, better diabetes control for enrolled patients), which enhances the group’s reputation for quality care. Operationally, more efficient processes have allowed the hospitals to handle higher patient volumes without additional facilities – effectively increasing revenue. The streamlined discharge procedures reduced average inpatient length of stay, freeing capacity and reducing costs. By achieving international accreditation, the hospital group has also elevated its profile and trust, attracting more patients (including medical tourists) and high-caliber staff. In summary, the engagement enabled the client to deliver faster, higher-quality services, positioning it strongly in an increasingly competitive market.