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ABS 2025
18% hike in health care costs confirmed
By Nidz Godino
“There is supposed to be increase by 18 percent for hospitalization costs, probably in second quarter of the year… may even be higher because of effects of inflation,” Private Hospitals Association of the Philippines Inc. (PHAPI) president Dr. Jose Rene de Grano said Filipinos may have to pay at least 18 percent more for hospitalization – possibly by beginning of second quarter of the year largely due to rising costs of medical supplies.
De Grano said figure might even be higher in view of rising inflation.
He said with rising costs of medical supplies, private hospitals would have no choice but to charge higher fees to keep operations stable and cover losses. “If these items will be increased from our source, then that will eventually result in increase on our side since there is at least 10 to 20 percent markup on these items to cover for overhead expenses, if government can only control prices of these health care commodities, then there will probably be no increase or very minimal increase in health care costs,” De Grano said.
He said adjustments in hospitalization costs would enable hospital management to raise wages of hospital staff such as nurses, medical technologists, radiology technologists, respiratory technicians, cardiac technicians, pharmacists, among others.
“If we don’t implement increase in their salaries, there is high chance of them leaving us, to transfer to other hospitals or go overseas…that increase will never stop them from doing so since there is also limit on amount that we can allocate for their salaries,” De Grano explained.
PHAPI pointed out that given increase in benefits for patients as announced by Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth), burden of advancing payments for services would be placed on private hospitals.
“We will see effects of increase in benefits… after around two months if PhilHealth will be good on their job of paying us for money we will be advancing in behalf of our members,increase in benefits also increases our risk of not being paid and having higher ‘accounts receivable’ from them,” he pointed out.
Unlike small hospitals, De Grano said bigger hospitals can survive for probably two or three months without being reimbursed.
“Small hospitals will suffer much and I think there is chance of them folding up or downsizing again,” he added.
According to PHAPI, PhilHealth still owes them around P4 billion in unpaid claims dating back to pandemic years.
De Grano said private hospitals are not subsidized by government so any increases in their operational cost would translate to increase in hospitalization charges.
“Unlike in government facilities, whether they have more patients or no patients at all, they get same budget and if their budget goes down, they can always request for supplemental budget…for us, we rely on services we offer our patients and on reimbursements by PhilHealth, health maintenance organizations and insurance companies,” he said.
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