The King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre (; KFSH) is a non-profit tertiary healthcare institution headquartered in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Overview
As a tertiary referral hospital, it offers primary and specialized inpatient and outpatient medical care and participates in clinical research studies. The hospital is known for providing treatments in oncology, organ transplantation, cardiovascular medicine, and genomics. It operates hospitals in Riyadh, Jeddah and Madinah together with a virtual care centre, and reports a combined capacity of about 2,450 beds and a workforce of more than 17,000 people drawn from over 60 nationalities. In 2024, it was ranked 229th globally and 2nd in the Middle East by Newsweek. It placed 209th globally in Newsweek's 2025 ranking, when Arab News reported it as the only hospital from an Arab or African country on the list, and 153rd in 2026.
Newsweek's Best Specialized Hospitals Middle East 2026 ranking listed Riyadh first in the region in oncology and orthopaedics, second in cardiology, gastroenterology and neurology, and fifth in paediatrics, while Jeddah was ranked in all six specialties.
History
KFSH was established in 1970 by King Faisal on land he donated for the hospital. The donated site covered approximately 450,000 square metres. The hospital was officially inaugurated in 1975 by King Khalid. KFSH began operations, initially with a capacity of 17 beds.
The hospital established its Organ Transplant Program in 1981 when the first kidney transplant was performed at the institute. In 1984, KFSH performed its first HSCT and was the first HSCT center in the World Health Organization Eastern Mediterranean Region to perform the procedure. In 1989, the hospital conducted its first heart transplant.
Other early milestones recorded by the hospital include the first cardiac surgical centre in Saudi Arabia, developed with a team from Baylor College of Medicine; the introduction of HLA testing for transplantation and accreditation by the College of American Pathologists, which KFSH describes as the first in Asia; the creation of Academic and Research Affairs; and the launch in 1981 of the journal now published as the Annals of Saudi Medicine.
From 1973 to 1985, the hospital was administered by the Hospital Corporation of America (HCA). HCA was awarded the contract in 1973 to staff, commission and manage the hospital, its first international contract, under an agreement signed with Saudi Arabia that year, and United States court records describe the arrangement as running for at least sixteen years from 1973. In 1985, following a Royal Decree, the contract with HCA ended and the responsibility for the administration and operation of the hospital's premises was undertaken by a national team.
During the 1990s, KFSH introduced new areas of healthcare, including a colorectal unit in 1990 and a national home healthcare program in 1991. The outpatient building began operations in 1995. The King Fahd National Centre for Children's Cancer (KFNCCCR) at KFSH was established in 1997 to provide specialized care for pediatric oncology and hematology patients.
KFSH Jeddah was established in 2000. In 2007 the hospital opened the first bone bank in Saudi Arabia, which became the first national bone bank serving the Ministry of Health the following year. The King Abdullah Center for Oncology and Liver Diseases at KFSH Riyadh began operations in 2017, a 23-floor building with 300 beds, and the Madinah hospital, previously Al-Miqat Hospital, was transferred to KFSH in 2018 by order of King Salman and opened as a KFSH branch in 2021.
In 2020, the Centre for Genomic Medicine was established for research and personalized treatment of genetic diseases. It is one of a group of centres of excellence created in a restructuring around 2019 and 2020, alongside the Organ Transplant Centre of Excellence. In December 2021, a Royal Order transformed KFSH into an independent, government-owned, non-profit foundation, aligning with Saudi Vision 2030 objectives. The Saudi Press Agency and Saudi Gazette both record the instrument as a royal order () issued on 21 December 2021. KFSH launched its Virtual Care Centre the same year.
In August 2026 the group opened Almather Hospital in Riyadh, a secondary care hospital for insured and self-paying patients offering internal medicine, general surgery, paediatrics, obstetrics and gynaecology, cardiology and orthopaedics, together with a sports medicine centre and a precision medicine clinic. The group described the new hospital as allowing KFSH itself to concentrate on complex referrals.
Governance
Dr. Majid Ibrahim Alfayyadh is the CEO of KFSH. Björn Zoëga, who joined KFSH as deputy chief executive in 2024, serves as chief executive officer for the Riyadh hospital; in January 2026 the board approved the extension of his appointment through 2030. As of December 2023, the Board of Directors includes independent members and representatives from the Ministry of Health, Royal Clinics, and Ministry of Finance. As of 2026 the board also includes representatives of the Public Investment Fund and the Council of Health Insurance, alongside independent members affiliated with Johns Hopkins Medicine, Duke NUS Medical School and the Royal Marsden, and identifies Saleh Alqahtani as acting chairman.
Operations and facilities
The hospital operates three branches in Saudi Arabia, located in Riyadh, Jeddah, and Madinah. In 2023 the group recorded approximately 1.9 million outpatient visits, an increase of 11% on the previous year, and more than 40,000 admissions across the three hospitals, an increase of 9%. Its corporate profile records 33,295 surgical procedures and 42,149 newly accepted patients in the same year. No later group wide totals have been published.
Riyadh
KFSH Riyadh serves as the primary facility. The branch covers an area of 1,000,000 m² and has a capacity of 1,519 beds. The campus is organised around centres of excellence covering organ transplantation, oncology, genomic medicine, neurosciences and cardiovascular care, and reports bed occupancy of 86.2%. In 2023, KFSH reported 1.9 million outpatient visits and an average patient stay of 8.8 days across its branches. In 2024 it treated international patients from 17 countries, 77% of them from other Gulf states, and reported a 47% increase in international patients over the year.
Jeddah
The Jeddah branch is a 537 bed hospital and serves the western region in Saudi Arabia. In 2025 it reported 132,368 outpatient visits within its core specialised services, an increase of 15.5% on 2024; 97,647 virtual clinic visits, up 12.1%; and 14,924 home healthcare visits, up 11.8%. It also reported reducing the time taken to decide on referrals to 21 hours, and introduced therapeutic plasma exchange as an outpatient service so that patients no longer require admission. In December 2024 the branch performed what KFSH described as the first fully robotic liver transplant in the country's western region, on a 23 year old man, in collaboration with the Riyadh liver transplant team.
Madinah
The Madinah branch has a 400 bed capacity. It treats paediatric and adult oncology patients and also provides ophthalmology, obstetrics and gynaecology. In 2025 it delivered 23,443 chemotherapy sessions, increasing its treatment capacity by 27% on 2024, and reported a 20% year on year rise in patients accepted. The Saudi Press Agency reported 42,402 outpatient visits within core specialised services for the same year, including 20,754 oncology visits, 7,815 new patients and 4,934 surgical operations. A comprehensive radiotherapy centre is under development. In November 2024 the branch introduced a virtual pathology service which KFSH said reduced diagnostic turnaround from more than a week to a single day.
Virtual care
The Virtual Care Centre, launched in 2021, is counted by KFSH as a fourth site alongside the three hospitals. It served approximately 180,000 patients in 2023 and delivered 293,381 virtual clinic visits in 2024, an increase of 58.2%, averaging more than 800 consultations a day. A round the clock emergency virtual clinic launched at the beginning of 2024 handled more than 23,500 consultations in its first year, about 2,000 patients a month. KFSH states that nearly 70% of its patients live outside Riyadh, Jeddah and Madinah; stable cases are managed virtually while urgent presentations are directed to the nearest emergency department, and prescriptions are posted to patients. A virtual pharmacy consultation service was added in 2024.
Patient flow and capacity
A Patient Flow and Capacity Command Centre, established in 2021 under the hospital's Centre for Healthcare Intelligence, uses real time monitoring and predictive analytics to forecast demand, detect delays in patient movement and alert staff. KFSH reported that it had made more than 170,000 interventions since its launch, reducing average bed waiting times from 32 hours to 6 hours and emergency waiting times by 14%. Separately, the hospital reported reducing the median time patients wait in the emergency department for an inpatient bed from more than 13 hours in 2023 to 3.2 hours by mid 2025, a reduction of 75%, attributing the improvement to direct admission pathways from outpatient clinics, earlier discharge rounds and faster discharge medication and diagnostics.
Specialized departments
KFSH provides specialized programs and services in organ transplantation, oncology, genomics, and neuroscience.
Organ transplantation
Since the establishment of the Organ Transplant Program in 1981, KFSH has performed up to 9,000 successful organ transplants. Additionally, more than 5,000 kidneys have been transplanted since the center's inception. Transplantation of the abdominal organs and lungs is managed by an Organ Transplant Centre of Excellence established in 2020, which covers kidney, liver, lung, pancreas and small bowel transplantation and has reported more than 6,600 transplants since 2011. Heart transplantation is run separately by the Heart Centre.
The lung transplant programme, established in 1998, is described by the hospital as the only one in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, with 268 transplants performed since 2000; the pancreas programme began in 2004 and has performed 56 transplants; and 16 bowel and multi-organ transplants have been performed since 2016. The Organ Transplant Centre of Excellence reported 882 transplants in 2024. Its paediatric activity that year included more than 100 liver, 80 kidney and two lung transplants, and KFSH states that its 80 paediatric kidney transplants were the highest annual volume reported worldwide.
The hospital operates a kidney paired donation programme, in which two or more incompatible donor and recipient pairs exchange kidneys so that each recipient receives a compatible organ. It reported reaching 500 such transplants in October 2024, performing ten paired transplants over two consecutive days in August 2025, and completing 130 in 2025 for a cumulative total of 691. KFSH stated that the 2025 figure exceeded the 94 performed by the highest volume single centre in the United States and the 73 performed across all 23 Canadian centres combined, and reported one year patient and graft survival of 97% to 99%. Women accounted for 62% of beneficiaries.
In August 2025 KFSH performed a heart transplant on a seven year old Saudi child using an organ from a brain dead donor in Abu Dhabi, coordinated between the Saudi Center for Organ Transplantation and the United Arab Emirates national donation programme. The centre runs a three year multi-organ transplant fellowship covering liver, kidney, pancreas and small bowel transplantation, and hosted an international consensus conference on minimally invasive transplantation in Riyadh in December 2024.
Robotic surgery