‘Al Bashir Public Hospital working tirelessly to offer better services to citizens’

AMMAN — Al Bashir Public Hospital is going through a significant transitional phase with a number of recent improvements, Health Ministry Spokesperson Hatem Azrui said on Thursday, noting that the facility is now rather a medical city with four hospitals working under its management.

“The hospital is witnessing several enhancements mainly in its infrastructure as the old buildings will be renovated and a new emergency building will be established to replace the previous one which faces huge pressure in terms of the number of patients it receives,” Azrui told The Jordan Times on Thursday.

The new building will be equipped with the latest and most advanced equipment with a capacity for 150 hospital beds, according to Azrui, who added that the two-year-long project which costs $23 million is expected to be ready by 2020 and it will be funded by USAID.

Director General of Al Bashir Hospital Mahmoud Zureigat said that they have been “working tirelessly” to complete the required maintenance work in the shortest time possible. 

He said that the medical clinics are now operating over two shifts, one in the morning and another in the evening, in order to receive all patients quickly. 

“We are planning to buy a new MRI device to mitigate the pressure on the existing ones, as all the MRI appointments are four to six months far,” Zureigat told The Jordan Times, noting that this is also attributed to the huge number of referred cases for this particular test, although 80 per cent of the requests are not medically justified he said. 

As part of his follow up and mentoring responsibilities, Zureigat noted that the surveillance   cameras in the hospital are connected to his mobile phone in order to keep an eye on any possible violations.

“The surveillance cameras are in the public facilities and the corridors, not inside private rooms as we highly consider and respect patients’ privacy,” the hospital director stressed.

He also spoke of the security plan implemented in cooperation with a security company and the Public Security Department that has a unit inside the hospital.

The plan includes the closing the street vendors’ entrance and two main gates after official working hours, and only keeping open the emergency building gate. There will also have to be an arrangement of visits and fixed programmes that the patients’ relatives will be obliged to abide by. 

After its restructuring, Al Bashir’s four sub hospitals are: The emergency and outpatient clinics; gynaecology and paediatrics; specialised and general surgery; internal medicine, radiology and dermatology.  

Under the title “We work for you, our goal is to serve you”, the Health Ministry launched a media campaign to promote Al Bashir Hospital’s services and improvements, Azrui said, referring to the newly announced hotline and WhatsApp numbers of the hospital and the ministry, which aim at fostering communication with the public and receiving their complaints and inquiries.

The new hotlines of Al Bashir Hospital are: Whatsapp (079631040), landline (064702972) and the Ministry of Health’s hotline at (065004545), according to a Health Ministry statement sent to The Jordan Times. 

The hospital, which was inaugurated in 1954 and is considered one of the ministry’s largest hospitals in the Kingdom, has 1,110 beds, employs 3,125 people and received 584,000 patients through its emergency department, and 560,000 patients through its outpatient clinics in 2017, the statement added.