Thursday, October 02, 2008 Wenceslao: Medicines in hospitals By Bong O. Wenceslao Candid Thoughts
I WAS reminded of the advertisement line that says, “Sa panahong ito, bawal magkasakit,” when the wife of my cousin Nigel Wenceslao talked to me about her experience at the Perpetual Succor Hospital where she had his father treated.
Health care in the country sucks partly because profit motive dictates the operation of most hospitals.
It’s a damn if you do, damn if you don’t situation actually because if instead you go to a government facility another set of problem crops up. The service may be cheaper than in private hospitals but the patient ends up Mona Lisaed: he lies there and he dies there. Or to use another cliché, it’s like choosing between the devil and the deep blue sea.
Jackie raised an issue that many people have been complaining about concerning private hospital service: the price of medicines and other items that are being sold in their pharmacies. My wife’s facility of preference has been Cebu Doctors Hospital, but friends who are working there always advise me not to buy medicines from its pharmacy.
In Jackie’s case, the problem is worse. Instead of paying cash for the purchase of the needed medicine, she told the pharmacy people to charge the amount to her father’s hospital bill. What shocked her was the information that medicines, if charged to the hospital bill, were 30 percent to 40 percent more expensive. She thought this was unfair.
I think so, too, especially because Jackie said the family had been paying the admission expenses in advance. She was told that other hospitals do the same, although she didn’t have a way of knowing the veracity of such claim. She went to the hospital administrator and was told she may get a refund for the difference in the medicine price.
I don’t really know whether this is a concern of the Department of Health or of the Department of Trade and Industry, which I understand monitors the prices of commodities. But I agree with Jackie that consumers and patients need to have some protection from this practice. But it looks like government is not paying attention to it.
Just how big a dent on Perpetual Succor’s profit would it be if it changes this pharmacy policy? I don’t think it would be that big. Now, the hospital is being run by nuns so maybe they will understand this point. Or will they? As for the concerned government agencies, maybe it’s time you look into this problem for a change.
(khanwens@yahoo.com/ my blog: cebuano.wordpress.com)
