Medical errors have become rampant in our country, especially in hospitals owned by businessmen and doctors. Abdul Rahman Al-Ojairy, former head of the Legal Health Committee in Jeddah, said there has been an increase of over 60 percent in the number of medical errors that have occurred at various hospitals in Jeddah. He said the decision to shut down Dr. Erfan & Bagedo General Hospital in connection with a fatal medical error should be a deterrent for all those who are careless when dealing with the lives of patients. He added the committee had received more than 20 medical malpractice cases involving Erfan Hospital and all of them involved clear errors that resulted in disability or deaths. The committee took penal action against the hospital in connection with these errors. If we want to explore the causes for these errors, we can see that they are more than that we can count. But at least we can say that the most important cause is recruiting and hiring doctors and specialists who are holders of bogus certificates. This is a topic that I wrote and warned about four years ago. The last one was on June 10, 2009, in which I quoted a statement from Dr. Hussein Muhammad Al-Fareehi who said: “The number of medical practitioners with forged documents has reached more than 400 ever since we started their registration four years ago.” I also quoted another statement from an official of the Ministry of Health. He said: “The ministry was able to seize 920 bogus medical certificates and another 1,600 certificates suspected of being forged.” It might be said that the ministry has done well closing down Erfan Hospital for a period of 60 days. But this punishment is not an effective one, because the worst victims will be citizens due to the shortage of hospital beds as well as specialized treatment facilities in Jeddah. Hence, it should be ensured that no medical errors are repeated in case the hospital is allowed to reopen. Instead of shutting down the hospital permanently, the best thing to do is to revoke license of the present owners and hand them over to new owners or the ministry can buy the hospital and run it to prevent the current owners and hospital administration from continuing to practice in the medical profession.
