EDITORIAL - Best thing that could happen to CCMC

It seems that Mayor Tomas Osmeña is not as headstrong as he projects himself to be after all. He can be made to change his mind. The secret is to give him time and, more importantly, not to pressure him.

This observation can be validated by the fact that Osmeña is now toying with the idea of privatizing the Cebu City Medical Center instead of closing it, as what he had promised a couple of years ago.

Two years ago, reports of unprofessional conduct by members of the staff of the city-run hospital prompted Osmeña to threaten to close the 200-bed medical facility. Nobody really thought he could do that, but most feared he would do something really close.

After all, Osmeña listens to nobody. When he does something, better not contradict or criticize it, because even if what he does is wrong, and even if he knows it is wrong, his normal reaction would only be to hedge or dig in.

In the case of the Cebu City Medical Center, he stripped officials of the hospital of their duties and transferred responsibility to an oversight committee, with the caveat that those who do not shape up will be shipped out.

Now that was very close to shutting down the facility because the result would have been a lot of unemployed hospital staff. But that was two years ago. Nobody knows what happened in the intervening period. Maybe things have been forgotten, including perhaps by Osmeña.

But then a recent incident in which somebody was allegedly refused admission to the government medical facility prompted Osmeña to blow his top. Now the mayor suddenly remembered the CCMC.

But maybe Osmeña has learned, over the past two years that his closure threat hibernated, that actually closing a hospital for no other reason than pique will never fly, that if carried out, could actually blow up in his face.

So Osmeña is now thinking of something that could even be better, the privatization of the CCMC. Why not indeed. In fact, why did it have to take some unconscionable act like refusing a patient for Osmeña to think of the idea? We believe this is the best for the hospital.