Mayor tells hospitals to stop passing patients around

By Joseph B.A. Marzan

Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas has called out hospitals in Iloilo City, telling them to stop pointing fingers in receiving patients amid the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

The City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office reported to Treñas that non-COVID-19 patients who were fetched by City Government vehicles were rejected by other medical facilities in the city.

The mayor said that this has forced the patients to roam around the city streets themselves, in raincoats, to find medical facilities willing to accept them.

He said that if the hospitals would not resolve this concern, the city will stop ferrying patients.

“If the hospitals do not resolve who will receive these patients, my instruction is that, to protect our personnel, we will no longer fetch their patients,” he said.

Several hospitals in Iloilo City signed a Memorandum of Agreement on March 24, 2020 providing protocols for the referral and admission of COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients in the city.