The Assistant Secretary-General for Policy at SCH, Dr Faleh Mohammed Hussein Ali (centre), and the Director of SESRI, Dr Darwish Al Emadi (second left), at a news conference yesterday. Abdul Basit
DOHA: The Supreme Council of Health (SCH) has launched a nation-wide survey to assess the health expenditure patterns of citizens and expatriates, including the low-income workers.
The survey, the first of its kind in the country is being conducted in collaboration with the Social and Economic Survey Research Institute (SESRI) at the Qatar University.
The SCH had earlier conducted an online survey on health expenditure as part of its National Health Accounts project.
“The new survey will be conducted through personal interviews with people who are randomly selected by the survey team. It is expected to produce more accurate findings, that will help in policy making, especially when the country is preparing to launch the national insurance scheme,” Dr Faleh Mohammed Hussein Ali, Assistant Secretary-General for Policy at SCH said in a news conference yesterday.
The survey will cover a total of 4,000 samples from across the country, including 1,500 Qatari families, 1,500 expatriate families and 1,000 labourers. Launched yesterday, the survey will run until October 24.
The survey aims to update SCH’s health expenditure and utilisation database, for multiple purposes, the most important of which is to identify the details of households’ expenditure on the health services provided.
These expenditures include the families’ spending on health professionals, medications and medical devices. In addition, families and individuals will be surveyed on how, and to what extent, they access the health services provided in the public and private sectors.
They will also be asked about the main reasons of their recent visits, the person who provided the health service, and their preferred choices of the providers.
Families and individuals will also be asked about their satisfaction with the services provided to them and the health sector in general. The survey also includes questions related to the private health insurance currently provided in Qatar, and the type of the services covered by the private health insurance companies.
The survey will also shed light on the prevalence of diseases among the different sections of the society, and whether the utilisation of the services is balanced between preventive and curative services.
“The results of this survey will enable the decision makers to design evidence-based health policies, which are based on the population’s input,” said Dr Faleh Mohammed Hussein, while calling on the targeted segments to co-operate with the project.
Dr Darwish Al Emadi, director of SESRI said the survey will be conducted by visiting households and labour camps in selected locations across the country.
“The samples will be representative of different nationalities. The survey will be conducted through one-on-one interviews in six different languages including English, Arabic, Urdu, Tagalog and Nepalese. We will do repeat interviews over telephone to ensure that the information provided by the surveyed is accurate,” Al Emadi said. He said the 4,000 samples are enough to have reliable data.
“We have conducted several surveys in the past and the response from the public was encouraging. We are expecting a similar response to the new survey,” he added.
A team of more than 100 skilled surveyors and supervisors has been set up for the project. They have been trained to use the latest techniques in data collection, which allow the interviews to be completed in the shortest possible time, within an expected 20 to 30 minutes. To ensure a positive response, SESRI has sent letters of notification to the selected families and individuals to encourage them to take part in this survey.
The researchers working on this project carry Qatar University ID cards, mainly to ensure the confidentiality and privacy of information.
Analyses of the data will begin immediately after the completion of the data collection. To maximise the benefits from the data, the results will be released through national reports and other research papers, said the SCH official. The Peninsula
