Churchill Aguilar
MOST of us do not know that government hospitals are categorized into three categories according to their functional capacities on what health services to offer. The details were spelled out through Administrative Order no. 2006-0029 entitled “Guidelines for rationalizing the healthcare delivery system based on health needs.” Simply put, this was designed so that different health care needs can be efficiently provided to the Filipino people making most out of the given budget.
The first category is called Infirmary. An infirmary hospital only deals with basic consultations and simple cases such as normal birth deliveries. It is common to see infirmary hospitals in sub urban cities and municipalities.
Falls second in the category is Level I hospital also known as Secondary Hospital. In this hospital, surgeries are performed for non-complicated cases such as caesarian section deliveries. Our JR Borja City Hospital belongs to this category.
The last category is the Level II hospital also known as Tertiary Hospital or a Medical Center. Such hospital is mandated to be end referral hospitals - meaning they deal with specialized cases that the first two hospitals are not capable to address. Tertiary hospitals are departmentalized according to specializations. Our NMMC (Provincial Hospital) falls under this category.
Now here’s the issue, while NMMC was mandated to be an end referral facility, that is, it should cater all cases that the lower level hospitals are not capable of catering, it ended up as a glorified and overfunded level one hospital. I say so because the biggest bulk of the cases they handle are mostly normal deliveries and simple cases such as diarrhea- these are not even diseases. And because their doctors are specialists, they have a relatively higher pay with bigger budget yet they deplete most of it for cases that can even be handled by lying-ins and rural health units.
And because most of their beds serve such basic health services, they failed to focus on their mandated service which is to more complicated health problems. For all these years of operation, shockingly they are still on the infancy stage of invasive cardiology and that people who need these services would rather go to Manila or Cebu because they are not yet that capable of handling it. While for those who could not afford to travel will sadly have to just pray and wait for a miracle.
This brings me to strongly suggest to relocate the Provincial Hospital outside of the city. All tertiary and complicated cases don’t need immediate attention. Operations are scheduled and patients are relatively on stable conditions. Opol or Laguindingan would be a good place for a tertiary hospital. It is not very far from us so transfer of patients would not be a problem.
By relocating NMMC, people would be forced to seek health care services at lower level health care facilities such as the city hospital and thereby significantly decongesting the NMMC from simple cases. This would give them the focus on providing people with their mandated services. People suffering from diseases would not have to go to Manila or Cebu.
My point is actually simple, we need to maximize the use of our health budget both from the national and local because health care services are still found wanting. It is therefore but logical and practical that illnesses are addressed at the right facilities.
