Gov’t specialty hospitals get P7-B funding

SPECIFIC TREATMENT Pedestrians walk in front of the National Kidney and Transplant Institute in Quezon City. The hospital caters mostly to patients with renal diseases and patients with diabetes who undergo regular dialysis. —INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

The Lung Center of the Philippines, the National Kidney and Transplant Institute (NKTI) and other state-owned specialty hospitals should be able to accommodate more indigent patients as Congress allocated nearly P7 billion for their operations this year, Sen. Juan Edgardo Angara said on Friday.

“Patients from all over the country travel to Manila to seek medical help from these specialty hospitals because the treatment that they require are usually not available at the medical facilities where they reside or are too costly for them,” Angara said in a statement.

P1.1B higher

“Eventually, we want to bring these services closer to them with the establishment of satellite specialty hospitals,” he said, echoing the plan that President Marcos laid out during his first State of the Nation Address. Under the 2023 General Appropriations Act, he said the specialty medical facilities operated by the Department of Health got P1.1 billion more from what they received last year.

P100B for PhilHealth

Angara, chair of the Senate finance committee, said the allotments for these public hospitals were higher by P2 billion from the original budget proposal submitted by the Department of Budget and Management. In addition, he said Congress set aside more than P100 billion to the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. for the implementation of the Universal Health Care Law.

According to Angara, Lung Center will get P835 million while P1.7 billion was appropriated for the NKTI, an increase from the P684 million and P1.6 billion they received, respectively, in 2022.

He said the allotments for the Philippine Children’s Medical Center (P2.1 billion), the Philippine Heart Center (P2.1 billion), and the Philippine Institute of Traditional Alternative Health Care (P156 million) were also increased.

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