PhilHealth-3 ‘fastest payor’— Bacareza

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO - Amid the issues of debt to private hospitals hounding the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) today, PhilHealth Region III Vice President Walter Bacareza boasted that the Central Luzon regional office is the fastest payor among all branches of the agen cy.

Recently, Private Hospital Association of the Philippines President Dr. Rustico Jimenez reported about the alleged billions of debt PhilHealth owes to private hospitals across the country.

In his statement, Jimenez warned that some hospitals may shut down or refuse nonemergency patients if PhilHealth does not settle its alleged debts soon.

But in Central Luzon, Bacareza disclosed that PhilHealth-3 maintains a “healthy and strong”relationship among its total 208 accredited health facilities in the region as of posting, and that no private hospital has cut ties with them.

“It’s a relationship between supplier and payor, the suppliers being the hospitals and I am happy to report that our relationships with our suppliers are in good terms. Although some of them perceive that PhilHealth’s turn around payout time is slow, still we are happy to say that PhilHealth-3 is the fastest payor in the country,” he said.

Bacareza credited the good turnout to the implementation of automated claims of hospitals, wherein hospitals encode their claims through the e-Claims system facilitated by Phi l Heal t h-3.

Through the said system, hospital personnel need not to go to PhilHealth-3 office or its satellite offices to encode their claims, thus expediting the process and lessening time spending between two parties, Bacareza explained.

“It all boils down to the proper implementation of our e-claim system and we are glad that our compliance with the automated system resulted to our fast processing of hospital claims and maintaining our relationship with our suppliers,” he said.