CCMC director moves for higher budget

CEBU, Philippines - Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC) Director Eduardo Sedoripa wants an increase in the hospital budget’s for next year to ensure adequate health services to indigent patients in the city.

If Sedoripa’s proposal is approved by the Local Finance Committee and supported by the City Council, the CCMC’s budget for drugs and medicines will be raised to P105 million next year.

Sedoripa said that right now, the 48-year-old city-owned hospital could not provide the needed medicines for patients because its allocation for drugs and medicines is only P20 million out of its P211-million budget.

This could be the reason why the attending physicians at the CCMC just issue medical prescriptions for patients to buy these outside.

It is Sedoripa’s dream for the hospital to be able to provide the drugs and medicines needed by patients, although the hospital will also ask patients, who can afford, to do so.

The CCMC has an annual budget of P211 million this year, but P145 million goes to salaries and other benefits of the 484 hospital employees. The rest goes to other operational expenses such as power, water and other supplies.

Even if he is only more than 30 years old, the Department of Health (DOH) highly recommended for Mayor Michael Rama to appoint him as chief of the CCMC.

Sedoripa, who spent his medical internship at the CCMC, said he wants to hire 30 more doctors and several nurses and medical attendants to comply with the DOH standards for the number of employees for tertiary hospitals.

CCMC only has 484 employees although the DOH requires it to have at least 600 personnel.

Due to the problem of lack of employees, Sedoripa said eight hospital departments are just supervised by some of his personnel in concurrent status.

Rama is not against increasing the budget of the CCMC, if there is money available.

The City Hall local finance committee already started preparations for the annual budget for next year. The law provides that the executive budget should be submitted to the City Council for review not later than August 16 of every year.

Sedoripa said the CCMC served 65,434 patients from January to June this year, much lower compared to 69,990 patients it served from July to December 2010.

From January to June this year, the city-owned hospital is supposed to earn P56.5 million from its services and drugs and medicines. But P22,726,214 of it were granted as free services to indigent patients.

Sedoripa earlier asked Rama to create a special Bids and Awards Committee (BAC) whose sole task is to attend to all purchase requests of the hospital in order to speed up the purchase of drugs and medicines.

Rama is not against the proposal but he will consult first with the Commission on Audit (COA). (FREEMAN)