From Institutional Excellence to Population-Level Access: How Pakistan Can Bridge Its Healthcare Divide

Healthcare systems are under pressure almost everywhere, but the strain is especially visible in lower-resource settings where demand is rising faster than infrastructure. In Pakistan, that pressure is playing out across a system that has to serve more than 250 million people with limited public investment. Public health spending remains below 1% of GDP, making the need for smarter, more scalable healthcare delivery increasingly urgent. That is why major projects like the Jinnah Medical Complex are drawing attention as potential models for what the next phase of healthcare reform could look like.

That raises the real question at the center of this episode: can a major new medical complex help transform healthcare delivery in Pakistan, or will lasting progress depend on broader system design far beyond a single hospital?

Welcome to I Don’t Care. In the latest episode, Dr. Kevin Stevenson speaks with Dr. Muhammad Faheem Anwar, Chief Operating Officer of the Jinnah Medical Complex & Research Center, about the future of Pakistani healthcare. Their conversation explores the structural realities of Pakistan’s healthcare system, the ambitions behind the Jinnah Medical Complex in Islamabad, and the larger issues of digital health, oncology, workforce retention, prevention, and primary care reform.

Key takeaways from the conversation…

• Pakistan’s healthcare system is not simply underdeveloped. It is highly uneven, with world-class care in some institutions but fragmented access and high out-of-pocket costs for much of the population.
• The Jinnah Medical Complex is being positioned not just as a large hospital, but as a replicable model for operational discipline, clinician training, digital health, and internationally benchmarked public sector care.
• The biggest long-term opportunity in Pakistan may not be tertiary expansion alone, but building a stronger primary care foundation, better data systems, and a more sustainable care delivery model.

Dr. Muhammad Faheem Anwar is a healthcare operations and public health leader with more than 20 years of experience overseeing large multispecialty hospitals across Pakistan and the Gulf region, with deep expertise in hospital commissioning, operational readiness, governance, digital health integration, and health system strengthening. He currently serves as Chief Operating Officer of the Jinnah Medical Complex & Research Center, where he is leading the operationalization of a 1,460-bed quaternary care hospital, following senior leadership roles at The Indus Hospital, Central Park Teaching Hospital, Punjab Health Facilities Management Company, and the Punjab Information Technology Board. His career highlights include improving operational efficiency at scale, advancing quality and patient safety systems, leading HMIS implementation, and advising on health system reform, climate resilience, and performance improvement in low- and middle-income country settings.

Article written by MarketScale.