Churchill Aguilar I WAS asked by Dr. Ramon Nery, the executive officer of JR Borja City Hospital, to iron out their systems in their HR department. Without much thought, I took the offer knowing I would be working with a Tofil and a Galing Pook Awardee in Health Governance. His credentials and his success stories in manning government health facilities in the province and now in the city are just too hard to resist. You see, I am relatively young and in my line of work I get much of what I share from real concrete experiences of the companies I have handled--their success stories and their struggles alike. And so I always look forward to engaging in agencies where I don’t just help but I also get enriched in the process making me perfect my own craft -thus my excitement to handle the well-known city hospital in Cagayan de Oro and work with no less than a legend in public administration. True enough, I was amazed by how he transformed the then poorly run hospital into a state of the art, fully functional and absolutely free public hospital. Indeed it must be true that the company’s rise and fall fully depends on the leadership. And that the roles of systems and organization, where my expertise are, are mostly just to sustain the achievement of great administrators such as him. As I looked into the organization of JR Borja General Hospital, I could not help but notice three notable improvements he made:
  1. He successfully commissioned the South Wing Building of the city hospital that had been left idle for 18 years due to local political squabble.
Under a hostile environment upon takeover of the hospital, the 19oom wing is now fully functional serving as home for Medical and Pediatric Departments. He also fasttracked the long due completion of the East Wing which is now fully functional with the help of Philhealth. He also allocated a specific ward for senior citizens.
  1. 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 86-percent PHIC-covered in 2015 from 47 percent in 2013. The remaining three percent are charity recipients while the 11 percent are those with capacity to pay making it a free hospital.
The revenue from Philhealth was then strategically used to improve hospital facilities defraying the cost of new equipment, repairs and purchase of medicines. Despite the lack of local funds, service delivery remained constant at 50 thousand sponsored Philhealth yearly enrolment from 2013-2015. Yet the revenue generated continued to rocket from P14 million in 2013, P65 million in 2014 to P120 million in 2015. Just last March, the Philhealth revenue reached P23,241,690 the highest monthly income so far.
  1. He then streamlined the procurement system that significantly reduced the cost of medical supplies such as dextrose which are now bought at P45 from P62.50 in 2012 and the paracetamol syrup which are now bought at P20 from P48 in 2012.
Even without the backing of the city council, Dr. Nery managed to make JR Borja general hospital a premier local government hospital with preferential option for the poor. Now that is true public service!