DOH insists on more hospital beds for poor

Health Secretary Janette Garin. CATHY MIRANDA/INQUIRER.net FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—The Department of Health (DOH) said it was reviewing the contract for the privatization of the 70-year-old Philippine Orthopedic Center (POC) to ensure that the bulk of its services would still be offered to government-sponsored patients and indigents enrolled in the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth).

Health Secretary Janette Garin said the review was needed in order to clarify the allocation of beds to charity cases, noting that the contract indicated that only 70 of the 700 hospital beds would be devoted to government-sponsored patients.

She said this was only 10 percent, a far cry from the initial agreement of 70 percent.

“We are standing by the initially agreed 70 percent service for sponsored cases while only 30 percent for private cases,” she told a press briefing on Monday.

Garin noted that 70 percent meant 490 beds of the 700. “If it’s just 70, that’s just 10 percent. There is a very big difference between 70 and 70 percent,” she said.

Garin said that while a purely government-run hospital needed to dedicate 90 percent of its services to indigents and only 10 percent to private patients, the government must be assured 70 percent of the beds would go to the poor under a public-private partnership.

“The entry of PhilHealth and universal coverage somehow takes care of the reduction in out-of-pocket expenditures. But there will still be [people from the poor sector] who will go to these hospitals so we are insisting on the 70-30 percent categorization,” Garin said.

She said a task force has been created that would initiate talks with stakeholders about the concerns that she raised, specifically on the percentages of sponsored and indigent patients.

The DOH will also make sure that the 1,000 POC employees will not be displaced by the modernization of the old facility, located in Sta. Mesa Heights, Quezon City.

“What was indicated in the contract was that if they apply and are accepted, they will be automatically resigned from the government service. But we are finding [the] means for them to be sustained and retained,” said Garin.

According to the Public-Private Partnership Center, the proposed modernization is aimed at transforming the POC into the country’s primary center for bone and joint diseases that would be on a par with global standards.