ANILA, Philippines — The Department of Health (DOH) on Wednesday

pointed out that it was wrong to equate the funds released to hospitals by
Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) with the number of
COVID-19 cases recorded in their communities since the amount they
received was based on the claims they made last year.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire explained that the way

PhilHealth’s interim reimbursement mechanism (IRM) worked was that it
was computed based on the historical claims made by a hospital in the
first three months of last year.

Biggest chunk
“The data you are seeing now is based on last year’s claims. There was no
COVID-19 then so it’s not right to compare it with the region’s number of
COVID-19 cases,” Vergeire said.

At the resumption on Tuesday of the Senate’s hearing on alleged

corruption and irregularities in the state-run health insurance firm,
PhilHealth said Southern Philippines Medical Center (SPMC) in President
Rodrigo Duterte’s hometown of Davao City got the biggest chunk of the
IRM as it received P326 million.

PhilHealth released P263.3 million to the Philippine General Hospital

(PGH) while it gave Davao Regional Medical Center in Tagum City P209
million.

PhilHealth made these disbursements known as early as April 7.

Data from the World Health Organization showed that on April 6, the
Philippines had 3,660 confirmed cases, of which 54 percent were in Metro
Manila, 7 percent in Calabarzon, and 3.3 percent in Central Luzon.

The DOH’s Davao regional office reported 80 confirmed cases at the time.
SPMC then was among the five initial subnational hospitals assisting the
Research Institute for Tropical Medicine in testing, treating and
managing COVID-19 cases since the onset of the outbreak.

The four other hospitals were Baguio General Hospital and Medical
Center, San Lazaro Hospital, Lung Center of the Philippines and Vicente
Sotto Memorial Medical Center.

PGH, Lung Center and Jose N. Rodriguez Memorial Hospital and

Sanitarium were only designated as COVID-19 referral facilities in early
April.

‘Largest hospital’ in the countryVergeire said that one of the reasons why
SPMC topped the list was because it is the “largest hospital” in the
country, which means that it is catering to a lot of patients. She noted that
SPMC has 1,200 beds.

Republic Act No. 11326 signed by President Duterte in April last year,
however, increased SPMC’s capacity to 1,500 beds.

“It caters to a lot of cases, even specialized cases. It has heart and cancer
specialty and other specialized services. [SPMC also has] high-technology
[equipment] because we are trying to prime this hospital to be one of the
leaders in Asia,” she said.

In mid-March, PhilHealth chief Ricardo Morales said the company came

up with the IRM to “provide health-care providers with the much-needed
liquidity to adequately respond to the pandemic.”