Hospitals give PhilHealth until end of month to pay

MANILA, Philippines — Private hospitals have given the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) until the end of this month to make “significant” payment of their reimbursement claims amounting to some P20 billion.

“PhilHealth had promised that before the end of November, they will release a substantial amount to hospitals,” said Jose Rene de Grano, president of the Private Hospitals Association of the Philippines Inc. (PHAPi).

“They said they would pay the good claims. They promised to find ways to pay us. We are looking forward to that,” De Grano told The STAR.

He said they had a meeting with PhilHealth last Monday to discuss the unpaid claims of hospitals, primarily for the services they rendered to COVID patients in 2020 and other concerns.

This came after De Grano announced that many private hospitals were keen on “disengaging” from PhilHealth by not renewing their accreditations next year.

De Grano said they would consider the reimbursements as “significant” if the state insurer could pay at last 70 percent of their claims.

“We’ll wait for end of November. The position of the hospitals is that if they can give us substantial amount, then we will talk again,” he said.

In a statement, PhilHealth said the meeting was the “first step toward more frequent dialogues and collaborations to address pain points and operational issues that brought challenges to both the state health insurer and service providers.”

PhilHealth said among the agreements reached during the meeting are the immediate release of the second wave of Debit-Credit Payment Method (DCPM) to those hospitals that will signify intention to avail of such service.

Using PhilHealth data, 60 percent of in-process claims would be released to hospitals that have not yet availed themselves of the DCPM, while the remaining 40 percent is released upon processing and reconciliation of initial payment.

De Grano said that hospitals are not interested in DCPM.

“DCPM is a loan. What hospitals want is for PhilHealth to pay us and we are not asking for loan,” he added.