Joel M. Sy Egco
Manila Standard

Wowed by the prospects of earning precious dollars each year, the Arroyo administration has embarked on a medical tourism program, backed by a financial grant from the Dutch government.

The program is anchored on the integration of five state-owned hospitals in Quezon City which will utilize state-of-the-art equipment to meet the health care needs of well-off clients from rich nations, according to documents.

Dr. Nestor Venida, chief coordinator of the integration plan, said the Philippine government is setting its sights on capturing even a small share of the $50-billion medical tourism market in Asia.

“Integration is occurring at a very slow but steady pace,” Venida said, who blamed the health workers for the delay. “Indeed there is strong opposition from health workers regarding the integration plan. But they are only misinformed. The integration plan will work for all. It will work best for the country. Their fears are baseless,” Venida said in an interview.

Under the plan, five specialized hospitals within Quezon City’s growth triangle will be placed under the management of the Philippine Center for Specialized Health Care. The five—Lung Center, National Kidney and Transplant Institute, Heart Center, Children’s Medical Center, and East Avenue Medical Center—will be placed under one roof but remain as they are and where they are, according to Venida.

Contrary to the fears raised by health workers’ unions, Venida said there would be no dissolution of existing hospitals or massive displacement of workers. In fact, he said the PCSHC would need additional medical professionals once the program goes in full swing.

Job losses feared

But the Alliance of Health Workers said the plan will cost the job of 420,000 hospital employees. Emma Manuel, AHW national president, and Manuel de Asis, president of the Lung Center of the Philippines Employees Association, claimed that the integration program’s thrust is to “streamline” the Department of Health and all its attached agencies.

That thrust is contained in Executive Order 366 or the Rationalization of the Functions and Agencies of the Executive Branch, which took effect in 2006, about the same time that the creation of PCSHC came to the fore. “The said law provides for the streamlining of some 420,000 government employees,” Manuel said.

“Since the recent reorganization of the Health Department, its vital core services are now limited to monitoring, regulating and troubleshooting. Therefore, health workers who are not connected to this ‘vital function’ may lose their jobs,” Manuel said.

But Venida, whose PCSHC holds office on the third floor of NKTI, allayed such fears, saying that the integration program would even mean the hiring of more health workers.

Aptly called “Integration Office,” Venida said the small facility is actually the birthplace of PCSHC and it is the official name of his unit.

The Integration Office is directly under the supervision of Health Undersecretary Jade del Mundo, one of the signatories to a resolution implementing the integration of the five hospitals. Health Secretary Francisco Duque also signed the resolution along with representatives of the board of the five hospitals.

Presently, PCSHC has around 100 interns who are undergoing training for deployment among the five specialty hospitals in the next few months, Venida said.

Dutch ODA

The hospital integration plan was conceived as early as four years ago, as evidenced by a memorandum of understanding signed among the Philippine government through the Health Department, the specialized hospitals and the Philips Medical Systems Netherland B.V. The memo details the scope of cooperation between the Philippine and Dutch governments in the “improvement and complementation of specialty hospitals’ health care services.”

The MOU stipulates that the Health Department, through funding from the Dutch official development assistance funds, shall “put forward a five-year health sector reform agenda covering the period 2005-2010.”

The parties agreed to redesign the health sector “to meet the health care needs of the Filipino people, to achieve adequate, affordable and universal access to quality health care services; and to improve the quality of services provided in major teaching and training hospitals, for patients, students and clinical staff,” among others.

For the Philippine government, the signatories are Dr. Juanito Rubio, health assistant secretary; Ofelia Bulaong, executive director of the Build-Operate-Transfer Center; Dr. Ruben Flores, executive director of Fabella Hospital; Dr. Ludgerio Torres, executive director of PHC; and Dr. Enrique Ona, executive director of NKTI.

The Dutch government was represented by Martien Druiven, sales manager of PMSN.

Interestingly, the MOU has a confidentiality clause that is effective for four years since it was made effective on Oct. 14, 2004. The provision states that “any tangible information shall not be reproduced, disclosed, duplicated or used, except to the extent required in connection with the MOU.”

Funding for the integration project, as stipulated under the MOU, shall come mainly from grant financing from the Dutch government through PMSN, including support from an ODA-related export program from The Netherlands (known by its Dutch acronym ORET/Milliev of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, under the auspices of the Dutch minister for development cooperation).

The main component of the MOU is to “build, upgrade and improve the capacities and capabilities of specialty hospitals to cater to the health care requirements of their growing clientele. It lines up various proposals on how to transform the local hospitals in consonance with the integration plan.

Despite strong opposition from thousands of workers from the five institutions, Venida said his office managed to “integrate” several functions of the five hospitals on ambulance services, security, maintenance, pharmacy and even public biddings.

“The idea is for the five hospitals to act as one. We are lagging far behind our neighbors in terms of medical program. Thailand and Malaysia, earn $50 billion a year each. What was originally proposed for the Philippines is to capture even a small share of that market,” Venida said.

According to studies, rich countries could no longer accommodate the medical needs of their citizens, Venida said. This is the reason rich nations refer their patients to countries with equally modern hospital equipment.