Metro-based clinics shut down by DOH go to court
A group of health clinics in Metro Manila has asked the Court of Appeals to stop the Department of Health (DOH) from shutting down their operations for allegedly monopolizing the medical screening of Kuwait-bound overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).
In seeking the appellate court’s intervention, petitioners Ruben Bartolome MD Clinic Inc., Abakkus Medical Diagnostic Services, Orion Medical and Diagnostic Center, San Marcelino Medical Clinic Co. and Global Medical Clinic accused the DOH of arbitrarily suspending them without due process.
They said the March 9 suspension order issued by Health Secretary Paulyn Jean Ubial, Assistant Secretary Agnette Peralta and Undersecretary Mario Velarde had resulted in “substantial damage and prejudice” to their business operations.
The petitioners also sought the issuance of a temporary restraining order to stop the DOH from implementing its order which they claimed would also adversely affect the employment of migrant workers not applying for jobs in Kuwait.
“Clearly… the questioned order (was) issued by the (DOH officials) without due regard [for] existing laws, rules and regulations, not even their own rules of procedure, and in blatant disregard of (the) petitioners’ constitutional right to due process,” they said.
“By reason of the indefinite and arbitrary closure of the medical clinics, petitioners suffered, and are continuously suffering, irreparable damage, either financially or otherwise,” they said in a petition filed by lawyers Edward Martinez and Jericson Dulay on March 16.
It added: “(The) petitioners were deprived of their right to earn and make a living. (The) petitioners’ employees and staff were likewise constrained to take off from work or to look for another job.”
The medical clinics lamented that Ubial ordered them to “cease and desist” from operating indefinitely without the filing of a formal complaint against them and even though the DOH has yet to conduct a formal investigation.
The group said the suspension order was merely based on two separate House resolutions filed by Albay Rep. Joey Salceda and ACTS-OFW partylist Rep. Aniceto Bertiz which they dismissed as “without any basis both in fact and in law.”
Citing an order issued by the DOH in 2013, it said a written complaint should have been lodged first in the Bureau of Health and Facilities Services before the issuance of any administrative sanction against government-accredited health centers.
In the resolutions they filed last year, Salceda and Bertiz claimed that some health clinics had connived with Mawared Services, Winston 8 Certifications Solutions Inc. and the Embassy of Kuwait to monopolize the medical testing process of Kuwait-bound OFWs.
Salceda claimed the fraudulent arrangement had benefited a select group of medical clinics, which supposedly collected some P530 million in medical fees from migrant workers.
But the petitioners said the House resolutions were not tantamount to a formal complaint as spelled out in DOH Administrative Order No. 2013-0006.
“(The DOH officials) merely confined themselves to the allegations contained in the House resolutions which cannot, by any stretch of imagination, be considered as a formal charge or complaint against the petitioners,” the group said, adding:
“Thus, the issuance of the order by the respondents was clearly made with grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction.”
