CHARITY BEDS IN PRIVATE HOSPITALS

It’s not funny, but I have heard jokes about we Filipinos being so good in crafting laws in perfect English, and yet we are not so perfect when it comes to implementing these laws. One such example is an Administrative Order (AO) issued by the DOH, mandating all private hospitals to allocate at least ten percent of their total capacity to charity beds, meaning beds for indigent patients. Probably, there is an IRR out there somewhere that I could not find right now. But as the saying goes, “the devil is in the details”. As such, we will not really know what that AO entails, until we can see the details. One thing for sure however, I have not seen or heard of any system, computerized or otherwise, that could do the monitoring and reporting of compliance. Almost always in most hospitals, incoming patients for admission are asked whether they have a health card or not. If not, it would indicate that the patient would most likely not have the capacity to pay, being probably an indigent. In theory, all hospitals should admit all indigent patients or not, as long as their allocation for charity beds have not been filled. But who determines whether a patient is genuinely an indigent or not? And who is keeping count of whether the allocations for charity beds have been filled up or not? I think these questions could be answered if all hospitals could hire regular social workers in their staff. But are they required to do that? And who is monitoring if they are doing it? IKE SENERES/12-30-2023