DUMAGUETE CITY -- The province of Negros Oriental has launched its own health insurance program that promises to outdo the state-owned PhilHealth in delivering medical services.

Gov. Emilio Macias II said the Provincial Health Insurance of Negros Oriental (Phino) was created after PhilHealth refused to accredit the province’s six community primary hospitals in the hinterlands and seven district hospitals.

Primary community hospitals, semi-permanent structures constructed in the hinterlands of the province, started to rise after Macias, a surgeon, first became governor of Negros Oriental in 1988.

Six community primary hospitals are where patients from the mountains are first brought, and where decisions are made for further treatment at the PhilHealth-accredited Negros Oriental Provincial Hospital.

While President Macapagal-Arroyo launched a program to make PhilHealth available to the people in the grassroots, the non-accreditation of the community primary hospitals became a stumbling block for its success, the governor said.

PhilHealth gives local government units P300 per member-patient, in what is called a capitation fund, but this is not enough to cover for the hospitalization costs.

“When the poor get sick, it becomes a grave problem. I decided to make our own system because eventually, I will be the one to spend for the sick patient because there are no PhilHealth-accredited hospitals in the rural areas and if they go to the accredited hospitals, which are found in Dumaguete City, they will be charged more than what their PhilHealth insurance can cover,” Macias said.

With P10-million seed capital, Macias is campaigning to the 24 component towns and cities in Negros Oriental to put up a matching fund to increase Phino’s capital base to the envisioned amount of P50 million.

The 2,000 workers in the provincial government will also be asked to join the program by giving P50 per month, or P600 each year, which Capitol will match with a P600-counterpart.

“This will be like forced budgeting for health, which will ultimately increase the health budget from the present 36 percent to 40 percent,” he said.

The provincial government, which had won a Galing Pook award for its health program during Macias’ first term as governor, has also made great strides in upgrading the equipment at the Negros Oriental Provincial Hospital.

With the creation of the Provincial Diagnostic Center and Dialysis Center, the province bought a CT Scan, several ultrasound machines, a mammogram, treadmill and some dialysis machines.

In her visit to Negros Oriental on Oct. 29 last year, Arroyo also instructed the Department of Health to allocate P50 million from the DOH Hospital Upgrading budget for the purchase of a magnetic resonance imaging machine for the diagnostic center.