PhilHealth told: Pay hospital claims

MANILA, Philippines — Sen. Grace Poe called on the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) to immediately settle unpaid claims of hundreds of hospitals, saying failure to do so would put the government’s pandemic response in jeopardy.

“PhilHealth should pay up. Hospitals are battlegrounds in this fight against COVID-19. They need what’s due to them, especially in this time when a number of them are overwhelmed with patients due to the recent surge of infections,” she said in a statement on Friday.

Poe cited reports that in Western Visayas alone, including Iloilo City, claims of hospitals and laboratories have reached over P800 million.

Local executives in the same area have raised alarms to the national government over the lack of hospital beds, dwindling medical staff, inadequate vaccine supply, shortage of medicines and the slack in PhilHealth’s settling its dues.

The senator said PhilHealth owes it to its members to be able to deal with the challenges hounding its system to reimburse hospitals.

The state health insurer implemented a debit-credit payment method starting April, supposedly to fast-track the payment of claims and make sure that all health claims were valid.

She said PhilHealth management should review the new system to determine if it is fast and efficient enough.