Dubai Health Authority - Most Valuable Government Response

Company: Dubai Health Authority
Company Description: Dubai’s Health Authority (DHA) is the local government entity established with the aim to provide an accessible, effective and integrated healthcare system, promote public health and improve the quality of life within the Emirate. The DHA's mission is to transform Dubai into a leading healthcare destination by fostering innovative and integrated care models and by enhancing community engagement.
Nomination Category: COVID-19 Response Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Most Valuable Government Response

Nomination Title: Dubai Health Authority COVID-19 Response Efforts

During the pandemic, and due to the rising number of cases, Dubai Health Authority “DHA” adopted agile business models to help conserve its critical services continuity, while increasing capacity for the increasing numbers of patients.

This included, the development of dedicated pathways for non-COVID-19 patients, the suspension of elective surgeries and OPD services, whilst continuing to receive other emergency and trauma patients, as well as the introduction of specialized telemedicine consultations serving up to 21,172 for non COVID-19 patients, and 69,242 teleconsultations for COVID-19 patients from March-December in 2020, reaching 94% patients’ happiness.

DHA received three recognitions by International Hospitals Federation for its outstanding practices during the pandemic - Dec 2020.

In alignment with its Strategic Objective#3 “Promote Public and private collaboration in healthcare”, DHA adopted a “Connected Healthcare Model” during the COVID-19 pandemic, to improve health outcomes and secure capacities for testing, mass screenings, isolation, hospitalization and quarantine according to unified protocols, integrated systems and measures. Required capacities were forecasted using “DHA’s Scenario Analysis and Capacity Planning tool”, that utilizes statistical analysis model to predict pandemic behavior by taking into consideration both global and local infection rates. Accordingly, DHA liaised with the private sector to create:

a. Dubai connected Testing Network: DHA’s laboratories collaborated with 18 licensed private laboratories to raise COVID-19 testing capacity up to 81,245 daily tests across Dubai, while integrating its Lab information system (LIS) to unify records, streamline testing and ensure immediate reporting and reflection of test results on real-time macro-reporting Dashboards. DHA Physicians’ happiness about the speed & quality of testing reached 92.65% and happiness about DHA’s efforts to raise capacity of testing reached 87.70% as per an internal study. This model won the Univants of Healthcare Excellence Award 2020.

b. Hospitalization, Isolation and Quarantine: During lockdown, DHA collaborated with the private sector to convert 22 hotels into isolation facilities and 8 hotels and 26 buildings into quarantine all connected via DHA’s Salama (EHR system) and HASANA (public health management system),increasing the bed capacity to over 40K beds,achieving the target of COVID-positive patients’ bed placement within 24hrs.