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Saturday, November 12, 2005
Turn hospitals into profit centers: guv
By Minerva G. Gerodias
Sun.Star Staff Reporter
Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia met with all the heads of 18 district hospitals yesterday and challenged them to turn these into “profit centers.”
By doing so, they can put a stop to the “hemorrhage of Provincial resources,” brought about by the huge cost of running the hospitals, the governor said.
Garcia lamented that for this year, she allotted P182 million for the district hospitals, but from January to September, total hospital collections reached only P19.1 million.
“This means that we are only recovering 10.5 percent of the total budget. This is a hemorrhage of our Provincial resources,” said the governor, as she challenged the hospital chiefs to generate more revenues.
“I’m doing my part to improve the infrastructure, equipment, facility, personnel and supplies and I’m asking them to help me here to turn around these hospitals into economic enterprise,” she said, with a promise to improve the condition of all the district hospitals.
Outsourcing
She also announced that with her outsourcing of medical personnel, the efficiency of the district hospitals have greatly improved. The department heads agreed.
“We will make it look as professional as possible and we will be deploying professional services. I have challenged them to operate their hospitals as profit centers for them to consider themselves as CEOs,” she said.
She hopes that her Philhealth insurance program will be of help to her goal of making district hospitals earn more.
Also from January to September this year, 16,504 indigent patients were treated in district hospitals.
“When we treat the indigents, we don’t collect any payments. Can you imagine how much we would have earned had these treatments that we extended to the indigents were reimbursed from Philhealth?” she said.
Duties
Garcia had asked towns and cities to enroll their indigent families with Philhealth, while the province will also enroll an equivalent number of families that each LGU has enrolled.
“We recognize our civic and social duties. However, government has to stop considering itself as a charitable institution even with a rich government like the Provincial Government of Cebu, because resources are never limitless while needs are enumerable,” she said.
(November 12, 2005 issue)
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