Ask a British person about their country’s healthcare system, and you might be bombarded with sharp remarks about long NHS waiting times. But despite its flaws, the UK’s primary care model is held up as an exemplary one by the Palestinian Rashid Tabari – so much so that nine months ago, he opened up the first healthcare centre in the UAE to be wholly based on the values and working practices embedded in the UK system.
Intercare Health Center “is trying to change how medicine is being practised in the UAE”, he says. “The UK for me has one of the best primary-care health models. Maybe it’s not the most efficient but the training and exposure of its doctors seems right for the UAE’s market.”
Mr Tabari’s clinic in Abu Dhabi’s Marina Village has a team of four UK-trained general practitioners (GPs), as family physician consultants are known in the British system. He aims to provide the “cradle-to-the-grave” approach that’s common in the UK, and that used to be practised in Abu Dhabi when Mr Tabari, who is now 42, was growing up in the city.
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“There was always one doctor who used to take care of everybody, whatever your symptoms,” he says. “Things have evolved since then but it has now gone full circle. We are offering that same continuity of care. You can see one physician for different conditions in different areas of the body, rather than seeing multiple physicians. The doctor can coordinate a referral to a specialist if needed but they have that central access to all your notes.”
One of the centre’s GPs, Dr Koyes Ahmed says: “ours is a holistic model, not only from the physical side but also because often a lot of conditions have psychological and social components.”
Primary Care is practised in some form in many Western countries, including New Zealand, France and South Africa, where the centre’s chief operating officer, Juanita Coetzee, comes from.
“We looked at errors in how different countries practice primary care and decided to model it here in the way that we feel is the solution,” she says.
Mr Tabari describes his centre’s approach as being “evidence-based”, as opposed to the “defensive medicine” method he claims is commonly practised in the UAE. His GPs are paid a set salary, without being offered incentives to generate more money by over-prescribing.
One of Mr Tabari’s mottos is “low-tech, high-touch”, and the centre is relatively lightly equipped compared with other healthcare facilities. That’s because the decision was made to outsource as many of the medical services as possible, including blood testing. “We practice phlebotomy, so we only drill blood,” says Ms Coetzee. “We send it out to a partner to do the testing. If we’d brought a lab in, it would have cost millions and then the return on investment would take many years, which would put pressure on investors.”
When they’re not treating patients, the centre’s GPs spend much of their time developing new business. Dr Ahmed often visits schools and nurseries to give talks on topics such as how to spot symptoms of ADHD.
These educational endeavours don’t make the centre money in the short term and Mr Tabari admits the centre hasn’t yet made a profit. “But we believe it’s a matter of time,” he says. “Its about gaining peoples trust. If we keep the patient at the core of what we do, money will come as a natural consequence.”
Although primary care is a new concept in the UAE, it was highlighted by Health Authority Abu Dhabi in their Capacity Masterplan in August as being an area requiring investment.
Mr Tabari felt quite vindicated by the news, he say. “We we’re already in this space, and we’re ready for it,” he says.
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