Tom's advice to Manny Pangilinan: Don't buy CCMC, invest at the SRP

CEBU - Businessman Manuel V. Pangilinan would be better off putting up a hospital at the South Road Properties (SRP) rather than buying the Cebu City Medical Center.

This was the suggestion of Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña to the chairman of the Metro Pacific Holdings Inc., which expressed interest to enter the health care industry in Cebu.

Pangilinan was in town the other day to see Osmeña and even found time to visit the CCMC, which the mayor said would be for sale if there is an interested buyer.

Pangilinan announced that his holding company plans to pour a P1.5 billion-investment in Cebu for a hospital.

Osmeña said if Pangilanan would pursue his plan to buy the 200-bed capacity hospital, he would need to renovate the hospital’s three-storey building, which could cost him more money than constructing a new one.

The lack of parking space is also seen as a constraint to interested buyers.

Osmeña said it would be better if Pangilinan would buy a lot at the SRP and construct his hospital building there so he could provide his facility with enough parking spaces and to design it as a world-class hospital.

Pangilinan said that Cebu is a perfect site to put up a facility to meet the demands of the growing global medical tourism market.

Osmeña also said that while the businessman was able to make a brief visit to the CCMC, they did not negotiate about anything.

Pangilinan is not the only one who signified intention to buy the city-owned hospital.

Osmeña said the administrators of the University of San Carlos, the Chong Hua Hospital and the University of Cebu are also interested to buy CCMC, but he has not yet received any formal communication or offer for such.

The mayor said once he receives formal communication from them or from other persons or entities who want to buy the hospital, he and the other City Hall officials would first evaluate the proposal.

The mayor has proposed that any buyer of the hospital must be willing to pay half of the cost to pay off the employees who will be terminated from work after the sale of the hospital.

Osmeña has been irked by what he called as the poor performance of the hospital in the delivery of services to the people.

If the hospital will be sold, he has proposed that the annual budget for the CCMC can be used to enroll the city’s poorest of the poor under the Philippine Health Insurance (Philhealth) so they can avail of health services from private hospitals.

The mayor’s consultant for hospital management, Dr. Rodolfo Roman Bigornia, does not however like such plan, because even if a person has the Philhealth card, the private hospital will not admit him for confinement unless he could put up the required deposit.

Bigornia said the CCMC is not so bad and he believes that it will regain its good performance once the city will provide more funds to include the purchase of additional medical equipment and others.

Osmeña has offered Bigornia to become the chief of hospital hoping that under his leadership the CCMC would be improved.

Osmeña said he is not satisfied to the performance of CCMC chief Myrna Go, who has failed to submit to him a report about the hospital and her recommendations on how to improve the services.

“The city was blamed because of its failure to provide the CCMC with capital outlay budget, but how could we allocate for such budget without receiving any request from the hospital officials,” the mayor asked. — /NLQ (THE FREEMAN