General Hospital for Bacolod

By Modesto P. Sa-onoy

There is high possibility that within a year Bacolod City will have a hospital that had been the hope and dream of the city folks. For decades Bacolod officials, from the congressmen to the mayors had depended on the former Provincial Hospital, now the Regional Hospital. The most common justification is that there is already a hospital and the easiest way is to contribute than operate a city hospital which would be expensive.

This mentality has encouraged the opening of private hospitals that are, by their nature, expensive. Private hospitals are primarily a business entity and secondly a public service. When the owners were imbued with public service, the rates are reasonable. We had the Riverside Hospital founded by Dr. Pablo Torre and the Bacolod Doctors Hospital established prior to World War II by a group of doctors. I remember Drs. Gallardo, Jocson, Abueg and Lolito Tumbocon who were pioneers of this hospital.

All of them were civic-minded citizens who spent time and effort serving beyond the hospital so that they were not seen as businessmen but as benevolent physicians.

Despite this, most people go to the Provincial Hospital because it was subsidized by the government but as common in public hospitals, they are crowded, bureaucratic and poorly managed that private hospitals get the paying patients.

Hospitals are not the kind of service that politicians with image building in mind like to bother and yet they always claim they love the poor which, by their actions, show it to be a lot of bull….

And so when last year Bacolod wanted to borrow billions of pesos for projects because it has a high borrowing status, Mayor Evelio Leonardia and his controlled Sanggunian decided to construct a coliseum rather than a hospital despite the large number of patients in the Regional Hospital being Bacolod residents.

It is like the Romans constructing the coliseum while thousands died on the streets of Rome from sickness. The coliseum entertained while thousands perished around it and later within its walls for public entertainment.

Now Bacolod will have a hospital. Bacolod Rep. Greg Gasataya revealed last week that the House of Representatives on June 3 “approved on third and final reading House Bill 6731, establishing a tertiary hospital to be known as the Bacolod City General Hospital.”

Rep. Gasataya, who authored the bill, said that an equivalent bill will be tackled in the Senate by the Committee on Health chaired by Sen. Christopher Lawrence Go.

According to the Bacolod solon, the Department of Health had committed to fund the construction of the hospital and provide for its equipment. The DOH will handle the first few years of the hospital’s operations but eventually the Bacolod City government will take over.

The DOH pointed out that the Universal Health Care Act, operating the hospital will be viable, Gasataya added.

The Universal Health Care law (RA 11223) that automatically enrolls all Filipino citizens in the National Health Insurance Program and prescribes complementary reforms in the health system. This gives citizens access to the full continuum of health services they need, while protecting them from enduring financial hardship as a result.

The goal, according to the authors of the law “is to achieve full 100 percent coverage in the most expedient way possible, expand our health benefit package, and bring more doctors to remote communities.”

Under the guidelines of the DOH, a tertiary general hospital, as that of the Bacolod City General Hospital, offers services such as family medicine, pediatrics, internal medicine, surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, emergency services, and outpatient services, Gasataya said.

It will likewise offer ancillary and support services such as clinical laboratory, imaging facility, and pharmacy, he added.

Gasataya also said that facilities such as physical medicine and a rehabilitation unit, ambulatory surgical clinic, dialysis clinic, tertiary clinical laboratory with histopathology, a blood bank, and third Level X-Ray may also be included.

The Bacolod City General Hospital will be complete and can compete with the well-established and expensive private hospital. BCGH will be able to provide the care that private hospitals offer without having to charge toilet paper, sandals, pillows, and even medical instruments to their patients.

Although this bill is an achievement of great service to the people of Bacolod, city officials are silent. Is it because Gasataya proved them short-sighted and uncaring and that health is more important than entertainment?