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THE
recent failure in the US financial sector has started to
take its toll on the Philippine health-care industry, a
Private Hospitals Association of the Philippines (Phap)
official said.
Phap
president Rustico Jimenez on Thursday said that owing to
the exposure of certain local banks to large investment
institutions in the US, particularly with Lehman
Brothers, and the bearish investment climate, several
hospital loans with these local banks have been put on
hold.
Jimenez
said these loans typically fund not only new laboratory
equipment such as MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and
CT scan units, but, more important, hospital expansion,
such as the addition of beds.
“Hospitals need to increase their capacity by building
more rooms,” he said, adding, “[hospitals] cannot keep
up with demand. For example, in the Parañaque area,
there is still a [current] need for 200 beds, to supply
the population.”
He spoke
to the BusinessMirror during Hospital Management Asia
2008, a two-day annual event where health-care delegates
representing 280 hospitals and organizations from 29
countries discussed hospital-management issues.
Jimenez
estimated that a million beds are needed in the
metropolitan areas of the Philippines. He added that
because of hospital loans being put on hold, these
hospitals, some strapped for cash, cannot continue or
will have to delay improvements.
In an
effort for transparency, the seven local banks with
investments in Lehman Brothers reported their aggregate
exposure at $386 million. Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP)
Governor Amando Tetangco Jr. asserted that this is a
fraction, at 0.3 percent to 0.4 percent of total banking
assets, excluding the BSP.
However,
Tetangco warned that current conditions in financial
markets may lead to indirect effects such as risk
aversion, which may increase the cost of borrowing,
thereby making loans more difficult to obtain. This
effect is now being felt by local hospitals.
Jimenez
said: “Hospitals dealt with these local banks. They did
not know that this [US financial crisis] will happen.”
He
estimated that about a quarter of the hospitals
affiliated with Phap have had their loans put on hold.
The Phap has between 400 and 500 members around the
country, including large hospitals such as St. Luke’s
Medical Center and Medical City.
“It’s a
big issue for us [at Phap],” he said, adding that the
Hospital Management Asia 2008 is a timely event since
part of the agenda is on cost-cutting measures for
hospitals.
He said:
“The other countries will help us with their
experiences—to help us decrease the cost of operating
the hospitals [among other topics]”
He said
the larger goal will eventually be reducing the overall
cost of hospitalization.
Accreditation
ANOTHER
issue at the hospital congress was the accreditation
process for hospitals, particularly on the value of an
international accreditation in addition to a local one.
“I’m
referring to a globalized standard for health care,”
said Paul van Ostenberg, executive director of standards
development and interpretation, Joint Commission
International (JCI), a global accrediting body.
He said
that with health-care practitioners educated in very
different systems, licensed and regulated in different
ways, there should be an international norm for
competency evaluation.
An
international accreditation serves as a license of
quality but may also serve to improve overall services,
since practices that work in some hospitals may be
borrowed to suit other hospitals around the world.
However,
van Ostenberg acknowledged that JCI standards are “not
for everybody” and may be limited to select hospitals in
every country as their expectations might be too high
for some to attain. He said: “Most hospitals do not have
the proper resources, so we have other tools to develop
struggling community hospitals.”
He said
tools will be in the form of a general risk framework
adaptable to any country, for instance, strategies for
controlling infectious diseases—a common problem in
developing countries. |
