THE Cebu City Government is hopeful that portions of the new Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC) building will be operational to serve more residents in the city this year.
CCMC hospital administrator Kenneth Siasar said that construction work on the new building is already 65 percent complete.
Siasar said that the contractors are about to complete phase one of the project, or the construction of the first six floors of the hospital.
“We are about to close phase 1 or the structural, then we will proceed to phase 2 that is interior set-up until the sixth floor,” he told SunStar Cebu.
Siasar said the City targets to make phase one operational by August.
The second floor of the new CCMC building will serve as an emergency room, while the third floor will have the out-patient department.
“While the phase 1 is already operational, work on the remaining four floors will also continue,” said Siasar.
Mayor Tomas Osmeña wants the building to be operational, while works on the succeeding floors are ongoing; the previous administration had wanted to complete the construction of the 10-story building first before it will be opened to the public.
The City Government began building the new hospital in 2015 after the old CCMC building, which was severely damaged by the 7.2-magnitude earthquake in October 2013, was demolished.
However, the project encountered a delay in the construction in June 2016 after the Office of the Building Official (OBO) ordered the temporary suspension of the construction due to the lack of building permit.
The building permit was not processed because the ownership of a portion of the 4,000-square-meter lot where the new hospital will rise has yet to be established.
The first phase of the project alone, which include the foundation and structural frames, has an approved budget of P600 million.
The entire hospital will cost the City at least P1.5 billion.
Siasar said that once the phase one will be operational, they will apply for level three accreditation for the hospital before the Department of Health (DOH).
At present, CCMC operates under the level one accreditation.
Under the guidelines of DOH, a hospital with level three accreditation should have 300 beds, a physical medicine and rehabilitation unit, ambulatory surgical clinic, dialysis facility, blood bank and licensed imaging facility, among others.
A level one accreditation, on the other hand, means that the hospital only has less than 100 beds and can perform only minor operations. (RVC)