PhilHealth offers package for children with disabilities

Children with autism and other developmental disabilities can now avail themselves of free therapy through the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth), which launched Friday the benefit package as part of efforts to provide financial protection for all Filipinos.

“We are introducing this Z benefit package which is an improved, rationalized and relevant benefit for children with disabilities mainly to prevent the catastrophic spending of the poor and marginalized who are enrolled in the National Health Insurance Program (NHIP) while ensuring quality healthcare services,” said PhilHealth officer-in-charge Ma. Jude dela Serna.

She noted that early diagnosis and intervention is important in mitigating the impact of developmental disability—the delay or deviation in motor, communication, social, emotional or behavioral development of a child.

Children with disabilities, she explained, can use the package, which may range from P3,626 to P5,276, to avail themselves of assessment and planning by medical specialist and allied health professionals such as occupational, physical and speech therapists using applicable standardized tests, including rehabilitation therapy.

According to Dela Serna, government health care institutions shall initially be engaged to provide the sets of services to children with disabilities while other private HCIs will eventually be contracted to expand the benefit utilization.

“We are calling on our accredited HCIs that are capable of providing these mandatory services to children with disabilities to be our contracted facilities so that we can extend this package to as many children in need as possible,” Dela Serna said.

She added that that implementation of the benefit package shall be monitored according to existing performance assessment systems.