PhilHealth partners with JLN

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) is currently coordinating with the Joint Learning Network (JLN) as part of its enterprise architecture development initiative to implement health financing reforms and achieve universal health coverage.

The JLN is a platform for exchange between countries implementing health financing reforms. Its mission is to hasten progress and improve the success of financing reforms designed to improve health outcomes and financial protection for the poor.

The platform is crucial to PhilHealth’s target of universal health coverage.

Last April, the JLN hosted training on principles and operations of maintaining health data dictionaries or HDDs. The event was attended by 23 representatives from five countries, including the Philippines.

HDDs are important foundations in building sophisticated health management information systems. It also serves as a communication platform for standardized reporting and analysis among different stakeholders.

Technical guidance in this area is provided by PATH (Seattle, USA) and PharmAccess (Amsterdam, Netherlands), and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.

“Without a data dictionary, confusion and misinterpretations are common, especially among stakeholders who may use the same terms but assign them different meanings. The HDD is one way to bring them on the same page,” said PhilHealth chief information and technology executive Dr. Alvin B. Marcelo.

PhilHealth president and chief executive officer Dr. Eduardo P. Banzon fully supports the international partnership.

“We are grateful for the opportunities afforded us by this initiative to be both teacher and learner. We value this partnership as learning from our counterparts from other countries is important to us,” he said.

As it goes to the direction of open data, PhilHealth said it could begin with its transition toward a more inclusive National Health Insurance Program (NHIP).

“We are now formulating the Bukas PhilHealth Open Data Program as a strategy to maximize use of PhilHealth data to improve universal health coverage through collaborative research,” Marcelo said, adding keeping the lines of communication open and maintaining transparency are important to PhilHealth’s new administration.