A study of health centers in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia is a developing country with a tremendous potential for growth and development. In an attempt to endorse Primary Health Care (PHC) concepts, it abolished all its former dispensaries and maternal and child health centers, and amalgamated their services into health centers that deliver PHC services. This expansion in centers development created a need for evaluation to assess the extent at which the new objectives are being achieved. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the resources available in three large health centers in Saudi Arabia, and determine consumers' satisfaction with the services provided. The study was conducted in the City of Riyadh. Three centers were chosen purposefully and the consumers of the respective centers were interviewed as to their satisfaction with the services provided. The results show that there was a discrepancy between the findings obtained from the centers' resources evaluation and those derived from the satisfaction portion. It is recommended that the Saudi Ministry of Health would upgrade its centers' resources, and that more studies would be conducted in the other centers of the country.