Sunday, August 31, 2008 Cabaero: Problem like CCMC By Nini B. Cabaero Beyond 30
MANY have likened the Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC) to a dying patient.
It has almost become cliché that, after all these years of trying to improve services at the City Government-run hospital, it has remained a facility that its owners want to dispose.
It wasn't the first time Mayor Tomas Osmeña has entertained the idea of "killing" or selling the CCMC. He had always been trying to get rid of it and his inability to do so is haunting his administration.
In 2002, he already gave the dying institution six months left on life-support system and, if there is no improvement, he would commit mercy killing.
His words six years ago were, "I'm putting a fuse of only six months and I'm going to light it now." He meant the institution had only six months to rid itself of corruption and inefficiency. For a while there, some groups involving cooperatives of patients and doctors considered taking over the facility after the lapse of the deadline just so the hospital could continue to serve the public.
The CCMC apparently was able to persuade the mayor because it continues to live after those six months, albeit gaspingly.
Six years ago the motivation was to clean up CCMC of corruption and inefficiency; today the basis for Osmena's stance is to look for a better system. He said last Thursday he was not satisfied with how the facility is being managed and with the quality of its services to city residents. It is better to put the hospital up for sale and use the money to build more health centers and improve existing birthing centers, he said. Instead of the City Government running its own hospital, it would enroll poor residents with Philhealth so they may use the services of private hospitals.
Two schools, the University of San Carlos and the University of Cebu, are reportedly expected to come up with offers on the purchase of the CCMC.
As to the CCMC's 500 employees, Osmeña said they are the problem of the hospital and they should all be laid off before a new owner comes on board. "We'll just lay them off. They are the problem in that hospital. It's very hard to do any reform at CCMC because they have a culture of thinking only of themselves."
Any announcement by Osmeña to close the CCMC is met by controversy not only because of the number of residents who would be deprived of affordable and accessible health services but also because of the number of employees who would be rendered jobless.
The CCMC is one facility Osmeña has been trying to close down but that decision is turning out to be more difficult to make than expected.
Whichever way it goes--–sell CCMC or shut it down, the state and fate of that hospital are already making him look bad. When he speaks of a new health system for the city's poor residents to take the place of CCMC, it should be a system that would make him look better than as an indecisive administrator.
