CEBU, Philippines - The Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC) has treated 136,227 poor patients last year compared to only 135,772 patients served by the city-run hospital in 2011.
CCMC acting director Gloria Duterte expects the total number of patients this year to increase further because the hospital has acquired several brand-new medical equipments.
The 136,227 patients served by the CCMC last year, 120,773 of them were out-patients while only 15,454 were confined at the 300-bed capacity hospital.
Duterte is expecting more patients this year, particularly because the City Council approved P364 million annual budget for the whole-year operations of the 50-year-old hospital.
The City Council also allocated P80 million only for the hospital’s budget for drugs and medicines to minimize the cases that the doctors will just issue prescriptions to the patients.
Duterte said the CCMC’s gross income last year had reached more than P136 million although of that amount only P57.2 million is the actual collection while the P29.4 million is still to be collected and the P42.2 million were given free of charge to the indigent patients.
CCMC last year was able to procure an ambulance to be used to transport its patients to other government hospitals.
Aside from the ambulance, the hospital also acquired 57 items of medical equipments and is also planning to buy more equipment out of this year’s budget to make the hospital serve the public better.
“Maninguha g’yud mi nga molambo ang among serbisyo sa publiko nga nanginahanglan sa among tabang. (We will do our best to improve our services to the public who need our help),†Duterte said. (FREEMAN)