LINGAYEN-- Two provincial employees in Manaoag
Community Hospital are now facing administrative charges for Dishonesty, Grave
Misconduct and Abuse of Authority in relation to the violation of No Billing
Policy (NBP) for indigent patients in government hospitals.
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TRABAHO LANG:
Quipped by Dr. Jeremy Rosario, the No. 2 man of the provincial health office,
after two of his town mates were implicated on dishonesty charges at the
community hospital in the pilgrim town Manaoag.
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In an Administrative Case No.
01-2015 signed by Gov. Amado T. Espino, Jr. on January 6, the two hospital
staff have been allegedly found engaging in “unlawful acts of manipulating
hospital bills.”
The filing of formal
charge stemmed from a handwritten
affidavit complaint addressed to Gov. Espino last January 2 by a patient wherein
she was charged of P4,000 as hospital bill during her confinement period from
August 16 to 20, 2014 in the said hospital due to severe diarrhea
In her complaint, the patient
narrated that she was billed an amount of P8,000 despite being a Point-of-Care
(POC) enrollee of the provincial government.
The patient’s sister named a certain
employee who told her that their hospital bills will be lowered to at least
half or P4,000 because the patient is a Philhealth member. They no longer contested the hospital charges
as they were already asked to pay the bill in the pharmacy so they could be
immediately issued a discharge form.
However, it was later found out that
only P81 was remitted to the Provincial Treasurer’s Office with acknowledgment receipt
No. 9441513 and the same receipt number was issued to the patient bearing their
P4,000 payment for hospital bills. The receipt was allegedly issued by a
certain pharmacy aide.
From this incident, Espino
immediately ordered the Provincial Legal Office to issue a formal charge against
the two employees and asked them to submit a reply affidavit within 10 days
upon receipt of the administrative charges leveled against them.
The
administrative charge states that “the
acts you demonstrated unlawfully charging indigents, manipulating hospital
bills without any basis of computation and misappropriating government funds
are considered acts constituting Dishonesty, Grave Misconduct and Abuse of
Authority.”
In
an interview, Gov. Espino told mediamen that he already ordered the transfer of
the two employees to the Provincial Health Office effective today January 13 while
waiting for the submission of their counter-affidavits.
“Nalulungkot
ako sa lumabas na ganitong problema dahil ang probinsya ay talagang seryoso na
matugunan ang programang “No Billing Policy” para matulungan ang ating mga mahihirap
na maysakit. Ang provincial government ang umaako sa kanilang mga bayarin sa
pamamagitan ng Point-of-Care program
ng PhilHealth,” the governor said.
“I will defer my judgment of
preventive suspension against these employees until we received their answer to
the formal charge filed against them,” Gov. Espino said.
Meanwhile, Provincial Health Officer
I Dr. Jeremy Rosario who is also in charge of the hospital operations of all 14
government hospitals and a spokesperson of the POC program said the issuance of
administrative charges against the said two employees serves as a “warning to
all hospital personnel as well as provincial employees that any illegal
collection of hospital bills from indigents will not be tolerated.”
The Point-of Care program, which was
fully implemented last April 2014 in all government hospitals, is a flagship program of Espino
administration that bails out the indigents belonging to C3 and D category from
hospital bills, and to provide them
quality health services without any
single centavo taken out from their pocket.
“Trabaho
lang ito,” said Rosario, who hails from Manaoag, as he revealed that several
complainants have surfaced with similar cases of alleged unscrupulous
collection of hospital bills in Manaoag Community Hospital
involving the same employees. (Merly Ramos/pio)
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