The capacity of primary health care facilities in Saudi Arabia: infrastructure, services, drug availability, and human resources

作者：Quds Al Saffer, Taghred Alghaith, Ahlam Alshehri, Rimah Al-Mohammed, Shahad Al Homidi, Mariam M. Hamza, Christopher H. Herbst, Nahar Alazemi · 发表于：BMC Health Services Research · 年份：2021 · DOI：10.1186/s12913-021-06355-x · 被引用次数：97 · 研究领域：Healthcare Systems and Reforms、Global Maternal and Child Health、Global Health Care Issues

BACKGROUND: Primary healthcare (PHC) is an essential component of an effective healthcare system. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's (KSA) health reforms prioritize tackling the increasing noncommunicable disease burden by prioritizing PHC, centering it as the core of the newly proposed Model of Care. To identify challenges and opportunities to scale up PHC capacity, understanding the current capacity of primary health care centers (PHCC) is critical. A limited number of publications review PHC capacity in KSA, focusing on specific regions/sectors; this paper is a first to examine PHC capacity on a national level. METHODS: The study uses a countrywide Facility Survey that collected data in 2018 from 2319 PHCCs, generating information on their characteristics, number of health workers, services provided, and capacity elements captured through the Service Availability and Drug Availability constructed indices. Descriptive analysis was performed by rural-urban classification. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regressions were used to understand correlates to health workers and equipment availability. Finally, a logistic regression was fitted for selected services. Regressions controlled for various measures to determine correlates with facilities' capacity. RESULTS: On a national level, there are 0.74 PHCCs per 10,000 population in KSA. There are variations in the distribution of PHCCs across regions and within regions across rural and urban areas. PHCCs in urban areas have more examinati...