Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Saudis visit to learn about Taiwan's health insurance system

Taipei, Aug. 11 (CNA) Saudi Arabian officials completed a six-week training program in Taiwan that gave them an opportunity to learn from Taiwan's expertise and experience in its renowned National Health Insurance program, which Saudi Arabia intends to introduce in the future.

"Saudi Arabia selected Taiwan over Sweden and Germany as the place to send its delegation because Taiwan boasts one of the best national insurance systems in the world and because its population is about the same as that of Saudi Arabia, " said Fahad Jalwi Lzahr, Saudi Arabia's director general of health insurance.

Jalwi Lzahr led a 13-member delegation, including 12 health insurance officials from provinces in Saudi Arabia, to attend the "Health Insurance Professional Development Program for the Ministry of Health, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, " co-organized by Taiwan's Institute for Information Industry (III) , Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Department of Health, and Bureau of National Health Insurance.

The program, which concluded Aug. 9, aimed to introduce Taiwan's expertise and technologies to familiarize Saudi delegates with policies, administration and operational issues that are essential to the proposed implementation of the Cooperative Health Insurance in Saudi Arabia.

"Taiwan's publicly funded health insurance program is similar to what we would like to establish in Saudi Arabia, while the German program is more of an outsourcing program that involves a lot of private companies, " Jalwi Lzahr said.

The program included lectures and discussions, as well as on-site visits to organizations related to the topics covered. The lecture topics included historical background, basic framework, health insurance economics, health insurance operations, and hospital operations.

The on-site visits were arranged to give members of the delegation an enhanced understanding of the theories, administration, operations and implementation of a publicly-funded national health insurance program.

Jalwi Lzahr said he was happy with the program in general. Speaking about the on-site visits, he said he was especially impressed with the success of Taipei Municipal Wang Fan Hospital. He added that by the end of the program, the delegates had already been contacted by several Taiwan pharmaceutical companies which expressed an interest in doing business in Saudi Arabia.

According to Jalwi Lzahr, Saudi Arabia and the III will launch a series of cooperation projects between the two countries. Possible projects include a training program on health care and insurance information systems, on-the-job training related to health insurance system operations, and graduate studies in the health care and health insurance fields.