PRIVATE hospitals in Cagayan de Oro are only waiting for directive from their mother organizations in Manila before imposing a 10 percent increase on administrative fees.

This was according to Annie Salcedo, administrator of the Cagayan de Oro Maternity and Children’s Hospital and Puericulture Center (CMCHPC), following a decision by the Private Hospitals Association of the Philippines (PHAP) to raise fees to recover supposed losses from a 50 percent slash in prices of 21 medicines.

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“We have not implemented the increase yet, and the local chapter has yet to call a meeting for the purpose,” she said in the dialect. “But eventually we will, as we are beginning to feel the pinch of the price cuts in medicines.”

She said the prices cuts on medicines--implemented early this month--have affected their income substantially, even taking a toll on the employees’ payroll. She did not give figures on the losses, however.

Salcedo and other PHAP members in the city have found an unlikely ally in Dr. Jerie Calingasan, head of the City Health Office.

Calingasan said the 10 percent hike by private hospitals would be “justifiable.”

“I could not really speak officially but, personally, I think the 10 percent hike is only fair if only to keep their hospitals afloat financially,” said Calingasan in a chance interview at City Hall Tuesday.

That view is diametrically opposed to that of the Department of Health, whose officials scored PHAP for Tuesday using the Universally Accessible Cheaper and Quality Medicines Act as scapegoat to hike their administrative fees.

Mayor Constantino Jaraula agreed the hike would be unjustifiable if private hospitals attribute their rate increase to price cuts in medicines. “This only shows that private hospitals have been putting add-on fees at the expense of the patients. The pharmacies are supposed to be built-in services of hospitals,” Mayor Jaraula said. But because hospitals are “business ventures,” the mayor said the “reasonable increase” should be at “five percent” only and to be imposed solely when there is evidence that a hospital is losing substantially as to threaten its operations.

Even so, Jaraula appealed to local PHAP members “not to make too much profit in the medicines they offer in their pharmacies.”

Sun.Star learned that Dr. Jesus Jardin, local chapter president of PHAP and also medical director of Capitol University Medical City, is currently out of the country.

Jardin had earlier asked Congress to “iron out the loopholes in the Cheaper Medicines Law,” which he said was the culprit for complaints of private hospitals on price cuts.

PHAP’s rate increase has enraged DOH officials, who threatened private hospitals with sanctions in return.

“That’s an indirect way of circumventing the law. (If they do that) we can impose the sanctions stated in the law,” said DOH Undersecretary Alex Padilla, referring to fines and revocation of the license to operate.

In a meeting held Saturday, PHAP members agreed to adjust their administrative or service fees to cover for the losses they incurred when government implemented medicine price cuts, ranging from 10 to 50 percent last August 15.

PHAP president Dr. Rustico Jimenez stressed that under the plan, PHAP members would charge patients for medicines or injections administered on them.

But he said the increase in service fees will take effect only until hospitals have recouped their losses brought about by the failure of pharmaceutical firms to give them the rebates for the discounted medicines.

Padilla maintained the law specifically imposes sanctions for failing to implement the medicine price reduction, and they could still go after those who would use the measure to hike the fees for other services.

“It’s circumvention of law...by analogy. We have to find if there’s a direct correlation and we can impose sanctions. There’s a corresponding penalty for that,” he added.

The DOH is also looking at the possibility of opening the financial records of hospital pharmacies to determine whether there is truth to their claim that the medicine price cut is driving them to bankruptcy.

Also Dr. Robert So, program director of NDP, said the implementing rules and regulation of the cheaper medicines law allowed the health secretary to look into the financial statements and other records of any company in relation to the law's implementation.

“We're exploring legal and regulatory actions to see how we can address this issue. Even if they (private hospital owners) say there's nothing legally wrong with what they did, is it morally right from the point of view of patients?” So asked.

“They say they're going bankrupt. But have they considered the patients who were forced to sell their homes, cars, and properties just to pay their hospital bills?” he continued.

RA 9502 allows the health secretary to impose a fine ranging from P50,000 to P5 million on anyone found violating the law.

The DOH though could not stop the implementation of the fees imposed by private hospitals, but it could, however, suspend or even revoke licenses of hospitals.

So said they have invited members of PHAP for a dialogue to thresh out issues. He said they hope to meet within the week. (With Sunnex report)