Stomach pain that strikes with no warning. Symptoms too private to describe out loud. For many patients, a gastrointestinal (GI) diagnosis starts in a nervous silence, made longer by canceled procedures, confusing instructions and unreturned calls. At American Hospital Dubai (AHD), filling that silence became the work of an entire department.
AHD, a premium private healthcare provider in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), is home to one of the region's busiest gastroenterology departments. The hospital treats about 7,200 patients a year.
AHD has been a Mayo Clinic Care Network member since 2016 and was the first network member in the Middle East region. The hospital had the clinical talent and reputation many hospitals spend decades building. What they wanted next was to make sure every patient received the same level of care from the first call to the last follow-up.
Finding gaps in the patient experience
To reach its goal, AHD took an honest look at its own blind spots. It paid special attention to the moments a patient might not mention:
- Insurance approval delays meant canceling a procedure a patient had worked up the nerve for.
- Sedation capacity, which is tied to anesthesiology availability, created scheduling issues.
- Gaps in communication after a procedure meant a symptom could go unanswered, part of why 60% of patients were lost to follow-up.
Due to moments like these, patient satisfaction trailed the regional benchmark.
In April 2025, Mayo Clinic's Gastroenterology Department conducted an onsite evaluation at AHD and produced a full assessment report. Over the following months, The hospital's staff and Mayo Clinic teams held 22 structured working sessions online. The sessions drew on Mayo Clinic strengths, such as:
- Best practices.
- Standard operating procedure (SOP) frameworks.
- Quality improvement principles based on extensive experience through the Mayo Clinic Quality Academy. Joint case review sessions.
Four AHD delegates, including Walid Karaoui, M.D., spent a week at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. The delegates followed a GI patient's full path from intake through follow-up, with a stop at Mayo Clinic Health System in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
AHD''s team no longer had to imagine that patient journey. They had seen it for themselves.
Putting recommendations into practice
Standardized workflows and SOPs now guide clinic visits, so a patient's experience no longer depends on when they come in. New quality indicators track care metrics, such as:
- Cecal intubation rate.
- Prep adequacy.
- Withdrawal time.
- Endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) outcomes.
And two GI coordinators now manage communication, including a 72-hour outreach workflow that catches prep issues early.
Endoscopy turnaround time has improved from roughly 20 minutes to 12.4 minutes, so patients get answers, treatment and relief faster. More patients are staying connected to their care too, an improvement on that 60% rate of patients lost to follow-up.
These improvements are the difference between a lonely silence and a supportive presence.
Princess Bianzon-Balan, nurse manager for endoscopy in AHD''s Gastroenterology Services, has seen what the collaboration with the Mayo Clinic Care Network has meant beyond the numbers.
"Through the use of performance metrics, including turnaround time, we have gained valuable insights from Mayo Clinic to optimize workflows, improve operational efficiency, reduce delays and enhance the overall patient experience," she says.
As AHD's patient base grows, more patients can count on care that's tracked, followed up on and improved. The collaboration with Mayo Clinic continues into 2026, with quarterly leadership, nursing and operations sessions.
Patient satisfaction is climbing, with survey scores rising from 96% to 98%. Plus, AHD is moving toward greater subspecialization, recruiting physicians in third-space endoscopy, complex endoscopic ultrasound and hepatobiliary procedures, with plans for a dedicated motility center.
GI symptoms can be difficult enough without feeling lost in the system meant to treat them. At American Hospital Dubai, that isolating, uncertain feeling is being replaced by support and clarity, one patient, one appointment, one follow-up call at a time.
