Well Being/Manila Bulletin
March 6, 2008
These days, sick people who have the means would rather seek treatment in the swanky, hotel-like confines of private hospitals which offer state-of-the-art healthcare facilities, than queue in line for hours in hot, dilapidated, and cramped public hospitals.
For them, money is not a factor; quality healthcare under the best doctors and a comfy room are.
Although this is the case for many public health institutions, not all government-owned hospitals are being left out of the game.
The 33-year-old Philippine Heart Center (PHC), for instance, proves that it can compete not only with top private hospitals in the country but also globally with its cutting-edge healthcare equipment and quality patient care.
Showcase for medical tourism
"Of all the government hospitals in the country, it is only the Heart Center (that) is really earning. It is self-sufficient," reveals Dr. Antonio Pascual, a resident physician at PHC specializing in internal medicine, cardiology, and echocardiography.
In fact, the Center is only one of two government hospitals being showcased in the medical tourism program of the Arroyo administration, Dr. Pascual reports.
Medical tourism caters to the new type of tourists who travel to seek treatment in countries with affordable but excellent healthcare services.
He also bared that the PHC is currently undergoing extensive renovation, constructing an annex building for its laboratory, upgrading equipment and hospital processes to meet the global standards for accreditation by the Joint Commission International (JCI). The JCI is the largest accreditor of health care organizations in the United States.
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Dissenting analysis
Travel for Health: A Sell-out of Philippine Health Care
Medical tourism is but one form of globalization of health care – foreign doctors, foreign owned hospitals and medical facilities catering to foreign clients: a sell-out of the country’s health care system to foreign big business that spells government abandonment of its responsibility to provide much needed health services to the people.
BY PHILIP PARAAN
Contributed to Bulatlat
Vol. VII, No. 50, January 27-February 2, 2008
With a guidebook for medical tourists, which would be released internationally this October, there seems to be no stopping the sell-out of the country’s health industry.
Besides a Medical Tourism Bill being on the legislative agenda, there are subtle indications that the government is bent on getting a slice of the booming medical tourism industry in the Asian region.
The Department of Health (DoH) has been frantic about the dollar-earning potential of medical tourism while purportedly intending to allocate its enormous potential revenue from this for the improvement of the public health care system.
According to the DoH, the “nascent yet promising” medical tourism industry has so far already earned about $300 million since 2006, and is expected to earn as much $1 billion by 2012.
Medical tourism is broadly defined as a health holiday along with a provision for cost-effective private medical care in collaboration with the tourism industry for patients needing surgical and/or other forms of specialized treatment.
The Philippines, since 2004, has been packaged as the next destination for medical tourism. This project is officially known as Medical Tourism Philippines ( MTP). Initiated in 2004, it was only re-launched by the DoH in January 2006. MTP also involves the participation of health management organizations (HMOs).
Services vary from elective procedures like rhinoplasty (nose lift), liposuction, breast augmentation, orthodontics, to more serious and life-saving procedures such as joint replacements, bone marrow transplants, eye surgery, bariatric and cardiac bypass surgery among others.
Foreigners as market
Foreigners who want to avail of cheap surgical procedures are the main target market. For example, the cost of nasal injections is from P7,000 to P10,000 ($171.57-$245.10 ) as compared to a surgical noselift which will cost from P20,000 to P30,000 ($490.20- to $735.29). Besides being cheaper, patients are assured of the best doctors trained abroad while easily recovering in the most exotic spots in the country.
In recent reports according to Health Undersecretary Jade del Mundo, the country's health tourism sector covers 35 hospitals and stand-alone surgical facilities.
Leading private hospitals in the country like the Makati Medical Center, St. Luke’s Medical Center, Metropolitan Hospital, Medical City are pilot centers for MTP. Five other government hospitals, namely Lung Center of the Philippines, Philippine Heart Center, National Kidney and Transplant Institute, Philippine Children’s Medical Center, and East Avenue Medical Center have been included as venues for special procedures like kidney and heart transplant.
Bumrungrad International, the same company that runs the famed Bumrungrad Hospital in Thailand, since 2005 already purchased a controlling interest of 40-percent share of Asian Hospital.
Health officials claim that medical tourism could also alleviate the mass migration of health professionals as the demand for high paying jobs would surge in.
However, these have yet to be seen. In the meantime, hospitals around the country still suffer from lack of doctors and nurses. The Alliance of Health Workers (AHW) says that the government should start addressing the reason health professionals leave – low salary, poor working conditions and lack of job security.
Fundamentally wrong
There is something fundamentally wrong when a government starts offering “world-class” healthcare to foreign clients when it cannot even guarantee health for its people. In fact, more than 60 percent of Filipinos do not have access to primary health care and the leading causes of death are mostly treatable and preventable diseases.
Globalized health care
Under MTP, foreigners will be provided quality health care, while poor Filipino patients are likely to be neglected further. Priority will be given to these foreign patients with money to pay and thus services for charity patients will be decreased significantly.
At the Philippine Heart Center alone, an indigent patient wanting to undergo a heart transplant would have to wait for a grueling six months before he or she can be operated on. In the National Kidney and Transplant Institute, there is a heavy backlog of patients.
The full-scale implementation of MTP is seen to lead to the eventual foreign ownerships of hospitals and most segments of medical services in the country. The present moves of the Arroyo government to overhaul the Constitution would hasten such development.
Medical tourism is but one form of globalization of health care – foreign doctors, foreign owned hospitals and medical facilities catering to foreign clients: a sell-out of the country’s health care system to foreign big business that spells government abandonment of its responsibility to provide much needed health services to the people. Contributed to Bulatlat
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