PPP for health staff accommodation: Saudi Arabia confirms the trend

Health staff accommodation: a rationale for private sector participation in health?

Your Decide Hub keeps a keen finger on the pulse of complex contracting instruments such as Public-Private Partnerships in the health sector.

Based on private participation in health infrastructure and related-services, PPPs are increasingly used in a versatile manner, spanning areas well beyond the provision of health assets and their core clinical services.

One of the areas increasingly invested in through PPPs and their financing as well as contractual mechanisms is the provision of accommodation for health staff.

At the cross roads of the most important global challenge faced by health systems worldwide, i.e. the Health Workforce shortage and the need to build or refurbish health infrastructure to ensure relevance, PPPs aim to play a role in ensuring health assets deliver against the SDGs targets.

Trail blazers in this area include the Welsh health authorities who, as your Decide Hub reported ealier this year, have commissioned a PPP to provide over 700 tenants with new or improved accommodation within a 30 minute commute of one of the 3 acute hospital sites of the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board (click here to read the Decide news).

Saudi Arabi recently demonstrated further that all health systems are hard pressed to provide their staff with the right incentives and work conditions to allow them to do what they do best and focus on the provision of care.  As announced by our friends at PPP bulletin:

The Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health released a request for EoI. Under the plans, private partners will deliver a new 564 unit accommodation block for hospital staff, along with a 280-space parking area.

 

The project will be delivered through a design, build, finance, operate and maintain model, with the contract lasting 25 years after completion.

In this regards, complex contractual arrangements aim at fast tracking the provision of fit-for-purpose infrastructure for clinical care and ancillary services.

It also strives to address the “retain” element of HR policies aimed at health professionals which dire shortage is the main concern of health stewards concerned with the effective operationalization of their health system.

In the case of Saudi Arabia, this procurement choice is also underpinned by the official strategy to increase the share of private participation in the delivery of public infrastructure. Your Decide Hub will make sure to follow up and let you know about this project!

Hospitality and accommodation is also an area of interest for French authorities in France as well, with recent guidelines produced on this topic (click here to read the news brought by Decide).