The Minister of Health and Assistant Undersecretary had earlier directed the development of high-quality, easily accessible oral and dental health services to citizens and residents all over the Kingdom of Bahrain.
The Ministry launched three projects aimed to improve service provision and the mechanism of appointments at dental clinics in all Health Centres (HCs) and hospitals anytime has been the case in private practice.
This came in an interview of the chief of dental and oral health services consultant orthodontist Dr. Hana Ahmed Al-Khan with Bahrain News Agency (BNA). She said that these three projects aim to eliminate the need for patients to come early morning and to ensure patients obtaining a dentistry appointment and the provision of suitable treatment in due fashion. This mechanism will result in better use of the clinic's time and to provide service to the greatest number of patients.
Dr. Hana Ahmed Al Khan said the mechanism improves daily schedules in terms of patients' obtaining prior appointment within short notice, smart classification of dental cases such as urgent or routine cases in order to provide the service to every patient in the right time. The project related to e-appointment units' system can be summed up in the notion of activation of the e-system of follow up appointments in all general and specialized clinics. The project has been applied in Al-Nuaim Health Centre since 2007.
The pilot (i.e. experimental) application of the projects began in the following health centres "HCs": Shaikh Salman Health Centre, Al-Nuaim Health Centre, Hamad Kanoo Health Cetnre and Hamad Town's Health Centre and continues for three months. After proving successful the project will be extended to cover all HCs in the Kingdom of Bahrain in future.
Dr. Hana summed up the steps of obtaining a dentist's appointment:
1- Get you a numbered ticket from the ticket machine.
2- Go to the medical services assistant/receptionist/dentistry appointments coordinator for a classification.
3- In case of emergency, get a direct appointment from the coordinator of appointments for the same day and get listed in the emergency schedule (for emergency cases).
4- If a routine dental case, obtain a prior appointment to see a dentist in the pre-appointments' clinic.
5- The dentist examines your teeth and provides the necessary medical service to the patient.
6- Upon conclusion of the patient's visit to the dental clinic, the dentist gives the patient a special card in which he specifies the type of medication for the next follow up visit.
7- Patient should go to the coordinator of appoints and hands him the card of the follow up appointment.
8- At the end of each follow-up visit, patient would be issued a card in which specified the type of medication for the next visit. The coordinator of appoints would give the patient an appointment for the next follow-up visit.
The process would be repeated until completion of remedying all teeth which require medical treatment.