Situation in NCR hospitals improves
THE number of hospital beds in Metro Manila and adjoining provinces reserved for Covid-19 patients has increased after a slowdown in coronavirus cases, an organization of private hospitals said Thursday.
Private Hospitals Association of the Philippines (PHAPi) President Dr. Jose Rene de Grano said in a television interview that hospitals in the NCR Plus bubble were beginning to decongest.
“Medyo wala na pong pila sa mga emergency room at medyo decongested na ‘yung
Covid beds, medyo kritikal pa rin ang ICU (intensive care unit) beds (There were no more lines in emergency rooms and beds are already decongested, but the ICU beds remain at a critical level),” de Grano said.
Almost two months ago, hospitals in NCR Plus — Metro Manila and the provinces of Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna and Rizal — could hardly cope with the surge in cases, with patients waiting in line outside emergency rooms to get treated.
De Grano said the downside is that hospitals in other regions, such as Central Luzon, Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon) and Western Visayas, and Zamboanga City were now feeling the brunt of a rise in Covid-19 cases.
The PHAPi president said in Zamboanga, the group’s colleagues report of frontliners getting Sick, Hospitals filled to Overflowing and many health workers in quarantine.
In its May 12 report, OCTA Research flagged Zamboanga City as one of the areas outside Metro Manila where Covid cases
have dramatically risen. The city had a 47-percent increase in infections.
Based on the Department of Health’s Covid-19 tracker, as of May 11, Zamboanga’s bed capacity was at a high 70.7 percent.
De Grano wondered why the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) allowed the removal of the cap in hiring nurses overseas, especially in European countries such as the United Kingdom and Germany.
“Hindi natin maintindihan. Open sila ng open papunta sa labas, eh dito nga sa atin, hindi ko po alam na sinasabi nilang sapat ang health care workers natin, eh ‘yung mga private hospitals, kulang ang staff (We can’t understand DoLE. It says it welcomes foreign employment and maintains that there are enough health workers here, when some private hospitals are short of nursing staff),” he said.
De Grano added that only a few hospitals signed up for the DebitCredit Payment Method of the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) that will speed up the payment of claims, saying the state health insurer will only pay 35 percent of the claims instead of the 60 percent that was promised by them.
Some hospitals that were not being paid by PhilHealth were alleged to have engaged in “fraudulent claims,” but De Grano denied that all hospitals were in on the fraud.