RTI International launches collaboration with Saudi Arabia's Council of Cooperative Health Insurance

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NORTH CAROLINA — RTI International signed a memorandum of understanding with the Council of Cooperative Health Insurance (CCHI), a governing authority on regulating and supervising health insurance in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). RTI and CCHI officials met May 16 to sign the memorandum. His Excellency Mohammed S. Al-Hussain, the Secretary General (pictured 4^th from left), and Engineer Wael Al Dahhasi, the Assistant Secretary General for Technical Affairs (3^rd from left), represented CCHI. Donald Mon, Joshua Richardson, Georgia Karuntzos, Linda Dimitropoulos, Mahmoud Taha, and Madhu Shrestha (not pictured) represented RTI.

The CCHI has recently implemented the final phase of unified health insurance which now covers all private sector employees and their families. Payers governed by CCHI cover over 12 million beneficiaries, or approximately 40% of the population.

Through the memorandum, RTI and CCHI will conduct a healthcare payment, quality, health information technology, and policy research program to guide the development and implementation of payment and quality improvement models.

These models will focus on improving the cost effectiveness and quality of health insurance and health care services provided to beneficiaries. CCHI’s research program is intended to serve as the portal for the development and analysis of all payment models for private and public health care systems in Saudi Arabia.

“RTI is honored to be a strategic partner to CCHI,” said Georgia Karuntzos, vice president of strategy and development, RTI. “We are eager to support CCHI’s objectives in transforming payment systems from fee-for-service to alternative payment models.”

Through specific projects, the partnership will promote CCHI’s ability to acquire, manage and analyze health care services cost and quality data, such as from electronic claims and other means, to develop and support payment and quality improvement models. CCHI and RTI will also work together to strengthen CCHI’s workforce capacity in areas of health research.