WHY DO WE NEED A HOSPICE FACILITY IN EVERY PUBLIC HOSPITAL?

WHY DO WE NEED A HOSPICE FACILITY IN EVERY PUBLIC HOSPITAL? The Philippine General Hospital has quietly done something historic. With the opening of Balay Lingap, PGH became the first public hospital in the country to operate a state-run hospice and transient housing facility. That fact alone should make us pause and ask an uncomfortable question: why did it take this long—and why is PGH still the only one? Balay Lingap serves two critical functions. On the ground floor is a 24/7 inpatient hospice and palliative care unit for terminally ill patients, designed not like a ward but like a home—where pain is managed, dignity is preserved, and families are supported emotionally and spiritually. On the upper floors is transient housing for indigent patients and caregivers who travel from the provinces for chemotherapy, radiation, or follow-up care. This reduces congestion in PGH and eases the crushing financial burden of long stays in Metro Manila. This is not a luxury. It is basic humane healthcare. Outside PGH, most hospice and palliative care facilities in the Philippines are private or NGO-run. Studies estimate that only about 10% of hospitals nationwide have any form of dedicated hospice or palliative unit, most of them concentrated in Metro Manila and parts of Cavite. If you are poor, terminally ill, and living in the provinces, your options are painfully limited. Why is hospice care still treated as optional? In many public hospitals, terminal patients occupy ICU or emergency beds—not because aggressive treatment will cure them, but because there is nowhere else for them to go. This is emotionally cruel, medically unnecessary, and economically inefficient. Hospice care costs less than intensive curative care and delivers something hospitals often forget to measure: human dignity. The Department of Health should be given a clear mandate and budget to establish hospice facilities in all public hospitals, starting with regional and provincial centers. Balay Lingap should be documented in detail—its costs, staffing model, patient outcomes, and operational challenges—so it can be replicated, not reinvented. Is hospice care even part of the DOH’s official roadmap under the Universal Health Care Act? If it is, we should see timelines and targets. If it isn’t, that omission needs to be corrected—urgently. What makes Balay Lingap especially powerful is its systems design. It is modular: a hospice unit, a housing unit, a family-centered care approach, and a governance model anchored in community and family medicine. That means it can be adapted to smaller hospitals. Not every facility needs a large building. Some may start with a small hospice wing, linked to barangay health workers, faith groups, and social services. Public hospitals are the safety net of the poor. If hospice care exists only in private institutions, then dying with dignity becomes a privilege of wealth. That is morally unacceptable. We invest heavily in saving lives, and rightly so. But healthcare should also know how to care for people when life can no longer be saved. Balay Lingap shows that compassionate, dignified end-of-life care is possible in the public system. The question now is simple: will we treat this as an inspiring exception—or as a national standard waiting to be copied? BY RAMON IKE V. SENERES www.facebook.com/ike.seneres iseneres@yahoo.com senseneres.blogspot.com 09088877282/11-04-2026