St. Luke’s Medical Center reaches out to improve healthcare delivery

MANILA, Philippines - St. Luke’s Medical Center intensifies its partnership with public and private medical institutions from Luzon to Mindanao through its Partners in Healthcare Development Program, an expertise sharing program aimed at improving healthcare delivery in the country. 

To date, it has partnered with 38 hospitals all over the country starting with a memorandum of understanding with St. Theodore’s Hospital in Sagada, Mt. Province in 2008.

The most recent addition to this is the Cavite Medical Center that sealed the partnership with St. Luke’s last month.

“Partners in Healthcare Development Program is an expression of St. Luke’s commitment to improving healthcare delivery in the Philippines. It is about sharing our expertise; the unique systems that we have developed in terms of patient safety and quality of care; and our programs on medication management, infection control, advanced cardiac life support system, basic life support system through on-site seminars, among others in the partner hospitals,” says Dr. Joven Cuanang, senior vice president for medical affairs and chief medical officer of St. Luke’s Medical Center.

This program hews closely to the vision of the Reverend Charles Henry Brent of the Episcopal Missions who envisioned St. Luke’s as a mission hospital in the Philippines when he founded it 109 years ago.

“Being where we are today, St. Luke’s should be generous in sharing its expertise. This is part of our value as a hospital; it is part of our social responsibility. On the occasion of our 109th anniversary, we want to highlight our commitment to improving healthcare in our country,” says Cuanang.

The brainchild of the previous chairman of the board, Robert Kuan, and Cuanang, the program seeks to reach out to medical practitioners and hospitals all over the country to develop their medical capability and proficiency via mutually beneficial cooperation and partnership activities.

This involves the development of the healthcare system of the partner hospital through the sharing of the expertise of doctors, nurses, and administrative staff. 

St. Luke’s experts have traveled to provincial hospitals to share the latest developments in medical care and technologies to help physicians in these hospitals to stay abreast with current developments in diagnostic and treatment modalities.

Physicians from partner hospitals have also been invited to attend  international medical conferences and forums sponsored by St. Luke’s to further hone their technical know-how and skills. Moreover, these doctors have been offered visiting status at St. Luke’s.

The partnership between St. Luke’s and other hospitals has provided a venue for partners to bring difficult and complicated cases to St. Luke’s to enable their patients to have access to the superior medical services and technologies of the Medical Center.

“If there is a need for them for expertise they cannot provide their patients, they send their patients to us through a medical referral system. Likewise, if we have patients that needs continuing care in the hospitals in the provinces, we send the patients to them there,” says Cuanang.

In the next few years, St. Luke’s intends to cultivate these relationships further and extend its reach to a greater number of public and private hospitals in the country that can benefit immensely from such a partnership program.