PhilHealth admits ‘slow’ payment of unpaid claims of hospitals

MANILA, Philippines — Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) president and CEO Dante Gierran explained Wednesday that the ongoing pandemic is admittedly the cause of the agency’s slow settlement of unpaid claims of private and public hospitals.

During the Laging Handa briefing, Gierran said the pandemic, which led them to reduce their workforce, is one of the reasons for the slow payment of the state insurance agency’s debts to the hospitals.

“‘Yung utang, hindi naman matagal [mabayaran], I would say mabagal dahil may rason like itong COVID ngayon. Gasgas na na rason ito but talagang reason yan,” Gierran said.

(The debt, it doesn’t exactly take too long [for us to pay them], I would say COVID is among the reasons [why payment is slow]. This may be a ‘broken record’ to say it but this is really the reason.)

“Sa madaling sabi, ay talang nag-reduce kami ng workforce namin kaya medyo mabagal talaga yung trabaho,” he added.

(In short, we have reduced our workforce that is why work flow became slow.)

According to Gierran, hospital claims reached P107 billion in 2020 and of this amount, 85 percent had already been paid.

“‘Yung iba, hindi nabayaran dahil yung claim nila ay returned to hospital. ‘Yung iba naman talagang denied claims. Yung iba pina-process pa para eventually mababayaran. Talagang may kabagalan ang pagbayad ngayon,” Gierran said.

(The others that were not paid were either marked as “returned to hospital” or “denied claims.” There are claims that are now being processed for us to pay them. Payment really became slow this time.)

“We admit, we accept that we have liabilities. All of them are being processed,” he added.

JPV