The demolition of the old Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC) building at N. Bacalso Avenue will start next month to clear the area for a new and bigger public hospital.
The new CCMC will share space with the regional Bureau of Fire office and the Cebu City Integrated Traffic Operations Management (Citom) in an “integrated emergency service area.”
Private doctors collaborating on the project also want it to be run as a semi-private hospital.
These details were disclosed after a meeting by the CCMC ad hoc committee at the mayor’s conference room yesterday.
The committee chaired by Councilor Mary Ann delos Santos were also given a briefing of the city hospital’s new building design made by Espina-Perez-Espina and Associates led by architect Maxwell Espina.
The CCMC Cares Movement, a private initiative by Cebu doctors, also raised at least P500,000 from donations of medical practitioners working abroad.
Approval
Dr. Shawn Espina, lead convenor and chief executive officer of the CCMC Cares Movement, said the city hospital reconstruction project will be done through a Private Public Partnership (PPP).
He said the new CCMC may eventually be run as a semi-private hospital but this scheme would need approval from the mayor and the City Council.
“The most important thing is that we have to realize that when a hospital is controlled by government alone, it really won’t work especially as an emergency/trauma hospital,” Dr. Espina said.
The surgeon said the CCMC will still service the city’s indigent patients even if it is run as a semi-private hospital provided that the hospital will have facilities like a medical arts building, an income generating project.
“The public should know that health is not always for free. You have to understand that something should be done to ensure that they are healthy,” he said.
Allocation
Cebu City has so far raised P8.7 million under its “Piso Mo, Hospital Ko” campaign to fund the construction of a new city hospital which was closed due to earthquake damage.
The city-owned lot along N. Bacalso Avenue remains the most accessible and suitable place for CCMC operations, Dr. Espina said.
Delos Santos said Espina will present the new hospital building design during the City Council session tomorrow.
She said the city has more than enough money including the P172.4 million allocation for CCMC rehabilitation included in the city engineering budget for 2014 to start constructing phase 1.
The appropriation may be realigned from rehabilitation to fund the hospital construction project, she said.
Building design
Dr. Espina said Care CCMC will also continue to raise funds from their private donors to help in the hospital construction project.
Councilor delos Santos said the proposed city integrated emergency service area is about two-hectares big.
“We need an area where we can house all the emergency responders. The BFP won’t be evicted there,” she said.
Mayor Michael Rama said the integration plans will also address the city’s land ownership dispute with BFP-7.
“This (integration) will solve the problem. When you secure a building permit, you will need proof of ownership,” he said.
Safest place
Delos Santos told reporters after the meeting that the Cebu City government will implement its integrated emergency service area project by phases.
They will start with the demolition of the existing hospital building and the construction of a six story building on the 500 square meter hospital lot, which will accommodate at least 300-beds.
Hospital construction will later be expanded to meet Rama’s plan for the city to operate a 1, 000 bed-capacity hospital.
There is also a plan to transfer or even close a portion of Panganiban Street which separates CCMC from the BFP-7 building to make the area compact and turn it into a complex.
Rama earlier wanted the new city hospital built in a portion of the South Road Properties located at the back of the San Pedro Calungsod chapel.
But plans changed with the discovery of an existing policy of the Department of Health (DOH) which prohibits the construction of government hospitals near bodies of water, delos Santos said.
“In times of calamity, the safest place should be a hospital,” delos Santos said. /Doris C. Bongcac, Chief of Reporters