AFTER cleaning my ears yesterday morning my hearing on my right ear got slightly impaired as if something got stuck in it. Must be earwax blocking my ear canal. So I know I needed to have it checked. I could have gone to a private EENT clinic and have it flushed out in no time but I decided to try and see for myself how efficient the services of a government hospital in Negros is particularly the Corazon Locsin Montelibano Memorial Regional Hospital (CLMMRH) which is just a walking distance from my office.
I went in with ease, filled out a registration form, had my records encoded in their system and then paid the cashier and in about three minutes I was already at Room 3 in the Out-Patient Department for consultation. It was a Monday and the hospital was jam-packed with people so the three-minute processing was amazing, nay, unthinkable in some government hospitals.
My vital signs were then checked by a nurse, and then I was politely told to wait at the waiting area as there were six other patients ahead of me. The waiting area was ventilated with wall fans and was cozy enough with built-in TV sets with local channels so I didn’t even notice the time.
My first impression is that CLMMRH has clear and effective systems and procedures in place which ensured efficiency when it comes to delivering services. As with their front liners handling patients, they have this natural Ilonggo politeness and hospitality that made me feel welcomed. I would say CLMMRH is very much at par with other private hospitals when it comes to handling patients: orderly, polite and efficient.
I have few suggestions though to make the said hospital even better than what it is. I have noticed that they are charging patients for doctor’s consultation and they give medical prescriptions where they have to buy elsewhere. It was a modest P150 and the prescribed medicine was also not that expensive so it was already cheap compared to private health facilities charging people as high as P600 to P1,000 per consult.
But I have already handled two city hospitals in Mindanao, one in my capacity as governance consultant while the other as assistant city administrator. Both hospitals were able to make sure everyone who gets in and out of their health facilities will never have to pay a single peso. One specific hospital who tapped my consultancy services used the DOH Point-of-Care program to make everyone going in with health insurance get covered by PhilHealth. And for those who could not be covered by the said government insurance for whatever reason are being covered by PCSO funding which the hospital tied programs with. In short everyone is served free including all medicines.
As a government hospital, CLMMRH should resort to all other forms of fund sourcing so that charging the patients should not be an option. Our government has enough funds. Medical consultations and all other services in a government facility should be given free. The presence of so many pharmacies outside CLMMRH and in other government hospitals are indicators that the said hospital failed to serve the patients with free medicines since patients still have to buy outside.
Second, the very same hospital I mentioned has fully air-conditioned waiting areas with public WiFi. Well, that is not essential to a government hospital but if a certain city hospital was able to pull it off with zero balance billing for everyone and still provide a private like accommodation to the bigger public then it can very well be done in any public hospital too, it’s therefore a matter of leadership.
For those who think that it’s too good to be true, the hospital I was talking about is the JR Borja General Hospital in Cagayan de Oro. Well of course their Hospital Chief, Dr. Ramon M. Nery, is a multi-awarded doctor and administrator having been awarded as the Most Outstanding Filipino (Tofil) for government and public service in 2011 and being a recipient of the Galing Pook Award for Strategic Innovations in Operating Local Government Hospitals in 2010. His hospital now is a National Gawad Kalasag Award finalist for Local Government Unit-Hospital category, a finalist in the latest NBB compliance, Top 3 fundraiser for Red Cross and the first hospital with tele psychiatric consultation in Mindanao.
The point is, he was dealing with exactly the same government polarized by politics and limited by the usual red tape in the bureaucracy yet he was still able to provide health services free for all. He put in place a convergence of health care financing initiatives tapping the four programs of PhilHealth–the NHTS, 4Ps, POC and TsekAp as well as the DOH Medical Assistance Program and the PCSO Endowment Fund. It has increased PhilHealth coverage making the hospital 94% PHIC-covered from 47 percent in 2013.
Universal healthcare is not yet achieved in CLMMRH but I say the hospital is already ripe when it comes to efficiency in its operations. All it needs is to bring in funds and put in place innovations for such dream to materialize.
In a government hospital, quality health care means free healthcare. Nothing less.