PCSO should shoulder doctors’ fee of poor patients, says lawmaker

Official Facebook page of Rep. Zaldy Co of Ako Bicol party-list

MANILA, Philippines — Ako Bicol party-list Rep. Elizaldy Co has suggested that the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) shoulder the professional fees of doctors treating indigent patients, so that physicians would not refuse to treat them out of fear that payments would take a while.

Co, chair of the House of Representatives’ committee on appropriations, made the suggestion on Tuesday, as his panel was discussing PCSO’s contributions to the national budget.

READ: Public hospitals charging indigent patients to be fined heavily – PhilHealth chief

The lawmaker was referring to some doctors’ practice of refusing patients covered by the Medical Assistance for Indigent and Financially Incapacitated Patients Program (MAIPP)—as professional fee (PF) payments that are shouldered by the government take a while before being credited to them.

“For the last three to four years we have also provided medical assistance in the DOH (Department of Health) program, but the problem encountered is that while we put funds in every hospital, the doctors do not want to cover the patients who benefit from this because they prefer cash payments. They do not want to wait for 30 days, 60 days,” Co said.

‘Can we do this?’

“Can we do this? that we (Congress) will shoulder the hospital expenses through DOH, can the PCSO shoulder the PF of doctors so that those in dire need of assistance (can get treated) because sometimes doctors refrain from treating people who cannot pay professional fees,” he added.

Appropriations senior vice chairperson and Marikina 2nd District Rep. Stella Quimbo agreed with Co, saying that she herself received first-hand information

“That’s actually our problem, there are two things, one is we observed that doctors either do not want to be part of MAIPP […] number two, personally, I look at the information, I have observed that professional fees are often bigger compared to the hospital bill, sometimes three times higher more than the total hospital bills,” Quimbo said.

“That’s what the chairperson is exploring—about what PCSO can contribute regarding paying professional fees,” she added.

When PCSO Assistant General Manager Larry Cedro said that the PFs of doctors are not part of what their office can cover, Quimbo asked if this is stated in any law. When the policy appeared to be an internal guideline, Quimbo stressed that this could be changed.

Corporate credit card

Co meanwhile suggested that the PCSO, if it can shoulder the PFs, also adopt a system of corporate credit cards to hospitals, where a hospital would just swipe a card so that PFs can be credited to doctors who treat patients who are beneficiaries of MAIPP.

“There’s no loss to PCSO, the professional fee, as to how much you can shoulder—you cannot spend P5 billion if your budget is only P1 billion. This means that if you have already exhausted your funds, it will end but at least we had a better brand of service by creating a faster and more efficient way of solving the problem,” he noted.

In a subsequent ambush interview, Co said that they will ask the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) and doctors’ organizations to appear before the committee so that this problem of doctors evading patients under MAIPP can be solved.

“It’s been a long standing problem and people are suffering from it, sometimes patients can already go out but cannot go out even if they are due for release due to the unpaid PF — which only increases their billing costs […] so we suggested earlier to PCSO that if they can help us here, and the GM (General Manager) and the AGM said they are for charity.

“We also plan to call on the medical associations, they complain about PhilHealth but it seems they are part of the problem, I hope they help solve this issue.  What is 30 days of waiting? […] So let’s hope this cycle ends, let’s just help people because if we want to improve our healthcare system, we should help each other,” he added.