PhilHealth owes private hospitals around P20B as of August —PHAPi

The Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) owes private hospitals up to P20 billion worth of claims as of August, the Private Hospitals Association of the Philippines, Inc (PHAPi) said Monday.

“Actually noon pang August no...they owe us more or less around P20 billion and this is all over the country,” PHAPi president Jose Rene de Grano said in an interview on CNN.

“And continuous naman ang paggamit kahit na let’s say that they are saying that they paid already P10 billion, nasaan na ang mga payments na ito?” he added.

(And it’s continuous. Let’s say that they are saying they paid P10 billion already, then where are these payments?)

De Grano said that some hospitals are reporting that they have yet to receive payments from PhilHealth.

“Of course, the problem is the reconciliation thing, no? Minsan sasabihin ng PhilHealth bayad na kami and the hospital bill will be saying, no wala kami natatanggap,” he said.

(Of course, the problem is the reconciliation. Sometimes PhilHealth will say that they have paid but the hospital bills will be saying that, no, we have not received anything.)

Though PhilHealth had been paying recent claims of private hospitals, he said the agency has yet to pay for claims of COVID-19 cases in 2020, according to De Grano.

The PHAPi president said some hospitals were forced to downsize in order to continue operations amid the agency’s non-payment of claims.

“Ang ginagawa na lang po ng mga different hospitals ay nag da-downsize sila, nagkakaroon sila ng reduction of working hours ng ating mga empleyado just so maituloy lang po namin ang takbo ng mga operations,” he said.

(What hospitals do is they downsize, they reduce working hours, just so operations will continue.)

Announcement by mid-November

For months, hospitals have been consulting with their members on whether to sever their affiliation with PhilHealth.

De Grano said some hospitals will be announcing their plans for 2022 by mid-November, a few weeks after the October deadline given to the agency.

“The deadline for PhilHealth to make some good solutions to what we are asking is [the] end of October,” De Grano said.

“By this week, next week, or another two weeks, some hospitals will be announcing already on what they plan to do in 2022 on whether not to renew or stop accreditation with PhilHealth,” he added.

Resigned nurses

In October, De Grano said an estimated 5% to 10% of nurses in private hospitals in the country have left their jobs in the last two to three weeks.

“What we are doing in hospitals now is, of course, we are looking for replacements for our registered nurses. We are training underboard nurses, we are training nursing attendants,” he said.

De Grano said they are also urging nurses and healthcare workers to stay in the country.

“Of course, we are also trying to give them the best salary offer that we can give, but of course, hindi naman natin pwedeng tapatan ‘yung malaking, ‘yung mga dollars na ino-offer ng mga foreign companies or foreign hospitals,” he said.

“And we are still trying to convince them to stay in the Philippines,” he added.—AOL, GMA News