Private hospital occupancy rates at 60% — association

AMMAN — Mohammad Sarayreh came to a private hospital in Amman’s Tlaa Al Ali area on Wednesday to have his mother admitted for surgery, but he was turned away because there were no beds available. 

The mother, in her fifties, said she was in desperate need for kidney surgery, adding that she had been to three other hospitals that were also at full capacity. 

She was talking to the officer in charge of admission, who pointed to seated patients waiting to be admitted since the early morning hours.

“You see all these patients? Some of them have been here since 7am waiting for an empty bed,” Samir Basheer told the woman. 

It was around 3pm. 

Basheer told The Jordan Times that the hospital’s capacity is 110 beds, noting that over 35 people were on the waiting list. 

At the admissions’ desk, patients of Jordanian, Iraqi, Libyan and Yemeni nationalities were waiting to be admitted once beds were available.

Commenting on the issue, Private Hospitals Association President Fawzi Hammouri said occupancy rates at private hospitals across the Kingdom stand at 60 per cent, citing a need for investment projects in the sector to address the “increasing demand on medical services”. 

He explained that Jordan needs “specialised medical centres”, not traditional hospitals in order to enhance the Kingdom’s competitiveness in the medical field internationally.

The physician said Jordan is a “regional medical hub”, with the annual revenues of medical tourism reaching up to $1.2 billion.

Hammouri said Saudi patients are the largest number of non-Jordanians receiving medical services at private hospitals, standing at 250,000 in 2014, followed by Libyans, Iraqis, Palestinians and Syrians.

He also expected the number of Yemeni war patients receiving medical care at Jordanian private hospitals to increase.  

There are 61 private hospitals in the Kingdom with around 4,600 beds, and they employ 50 per cent of workers in the health sector.