PhilHealth 7 releases P804M aid for health centers

THE Philippine Health Insurance Corp.-Central Visayas (PhilHealth 7) has released around P804 million assistance package to 18 health care institutions in the region that applied for and were approved for the Interim Reimbursement Mechanism (IRM).

Arlan Granali, PhilHealth 7 area vice president, said as of May 15, 2020, they were able to release a total of P803,811,733.10 IRM fund to four Department of Health (DOH)-retained hospitals, one local government unit (LGU)owned hospital and 13 private hospitals/birthing clinics/rural health units in the region.

These include the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center, Eversley Childs Sanitarium and General Hospital, Cebu Doctors’ University Hospital, Cebu South General Hospital, Chong Hua Hospital, Chong Hua Hospital Mandaue, Perpetual Succour Hospital of Cebu, Mactan Doctors’ Hospital, St. Vincent General Hospital Cebu and Visayas Community Medical Center.

The IRM is an emergency cash advance measure applied by PhilHealth to provide hospitals with an emergency fund to respond to unanticipated events like natural disasters and calamities.

This, by far, is also the state agency’s biggest response to President Rodrigo Duterte’s call to curb the spread of Covid-19.

Granali said as of May 28, 62 out of the 111 total PhilHealth-accredited health care facilities in the region have applied for the IRM. Of the 62, five are DOH-owned hospitals; 16-are Cebu Province-owned hospitals; 10 are Bohol Province-owned hospitals; one is an LGU-owned hospital and 30 are private health care facilities.

Unlike those that applied for the IRM prior to May 1, those that applied and were approved starting May 1 are to receive their funds from PhilHealth’s central office.

Granali said: “Prior to May 1, we in the regional office were the ones who prepared the vouchers and everything. Starting May 1, the ones in the PhilHealth central office have been the ones preparing and doing the releasing.

He said as of now, they have already obligated around P1.2 billion (inclusive of both the released and the waiting-for-release amount for approved applications) out of the initial target of P1.6 billion IRM fund for the region.

He said, however, PhilHealth will now scale down its IRM release and preserve its funds for the anticipated expanded targeted testing required by the national anti-Covid-19 strategy.

He said the current concentration of the IRM release is dependent on which areas have the highest population density of the Covid-19 disease.

To avail themselves of the IRM fund, affected hospitals and facilities may apply and submit a signed IRM contract or Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) to their respective PhilHealth regional offices.

The regional office, he said, has no control over the approval of any application. They can only gather and endorse the MOAs coming from the facilities to the central office. /