PhilHealth increases basic benefits by 35%

CEBU, Philippines - PhilHealth recently adjusted its basic benefits by 35 percent to allow members bigger coverage.

The 35 percent increase in basic benefits was recently announced by PhilHealth’s regional assistant vice president William Chavez.

Chavez said that the increase was effective since last April 5 admissions and because of this increase their members can now enjoy 35 percent increase for payment to hospital room and board pay, drug and medicine, laboratory work-ups, doctor’s pay and among others.

He said that the incremental 35 percent increase is a timely initiative in PhilHealth’s end considering the difficult impact of the present global economic crunch on average Filipino families and individuals.

“The 35 percent increase in basic benefits is one of our endeavors to enhance our healthcare service. We want to do things slowly in accordance to the health insurance funds that we have. The present economic situation was one of the reasons for coming up with that decision and it is also a strategy to help in our campaign of enrolling more members and getting more people covered,” said Chavez.

He said that the 35 percent increase already provides members a big difference in terms of benefits as for instance, in a P150 per day allocation to pay for the service of regional doctors it now was increased to P250 per day while specialists will have an allocation of P700 per day compared to the previous P500 per day allocation.

He said that for instance, an admission from March 28 to April 2 only gets over P10,000 in PhilHealth benefits but for an April 9 to 17 admission for the same patient and the same condition could get as high as P27,000 because of the 35 percent increase.

Chavez also said that for October 2009, PhilHealth targets to enroll 85 percent of the entire Philippine population.

He said that PhilHealth’s membership pie is dominated 52 percent by the private sector followed by indigents and individually paying members and then the government with nine percent and overseas Filipino workers with six percent.

He said that their national target of 85 percent enrollees is a preparation to meet the provisions of a recent Administrative Order that delegates PhilHealth to achieve 100 percent health care coverage for the entire population by February of 2010.

Chavez said that despite achieving the 85 percent target enrollees at this point in Central Visayas, they continue to be aggressive in enrolling more people especially indigents in their indigent program which now has covered 53 percent in Region VII.

He also announced their plan to open a new service office in Mandaue City that will cater to PhilHealth members from Mandaue, Lapu-Lapu, Consolacion, Cordova and even as far as Liloan.

Chavez said that they already have funding for the said development but they are still looking for a strategic location.

He said that this will decongest the high volume of traffic in their service office in Cebu City and hence they can serve the needs of more members in the province. — Rhia de Pablo/BRP (THE FREEMAN)