Press Release

12 May 2023

The recently passed House bill effectively regionalizing heart, lung, kidney and 13 other specialty centers will help “medical evacuees” who flee to big cities for treatment and medical scholars whose studies are funded by the government in order to plug the lack of doctors.

House Deputy Speaker Ralph Recto said the National Network of Medical Specialty Centers Bill, which the House passed on Monday, seeks to spare the sick and their families of the “financial pain “of going to Manila, Cebu and Davao where government specialty centers are.

It will also create more “treat-train-teach” hospitals that would complement the Doktor Para Sa Bayan program, which will fund 3,600 scholars in 32 schools in 15 regions this year, Recto said.

The bill calls for the establishment by the DOH of National Specialty Centers, Advanced Comprehensive Specialty Centers, and Basic Comprehensive Specialty Center in selected DOH hospitals.

The designated hospitals will focus on 17 specialties : cancer; cardiovascular; lung; renal and kidney transplant; brain and spine; trauma; burn; orthopedic and physical rehabilitation; infectious disease and tropical medicine; toxicology; mental health; geriatrics; neonatal; dermatology; ear, nose and throat; and ophthalmology. 

The Quezon City-based Heart, Lung, Kidney Centers, automatically designated as National Specialty Centers, will provide the standard, training and technical assistance in the establishment of the specialty centers in the regions.

Recto said making specialty units part of existing hospitals is a “better, faster, cheaper”  approach than regionalizing the Heart, Lung and Kidney Centers into standalone facilities.

The bill, Recto said, “is one of the Rx to resource anemia in the health system.” 

“Nowhere is this lack more jarring than in the DOH-run medical centers in big urban centers. If their intake of patients looks like a congested artery, it is because they are swamped with medical refugees referred by hospitals which cannot treat them,” he said.

Creating specialty centers, he said, would relieve “catchment medical centers” of congestion, and patients of additional financial burden.

“For those from the provinces, the cost of seeking treatment in Manila, in the Heart or Lung Center, exponentially rises – the version of an elevated financial BP. Money that could have been spent solely for the patient’s treatment is eaten up by fare, board and lodging of caregivers,” he said.

And being far from families, Recto said “medical evacuees are denied of the constant care of a revolving set of caregivers, whose presence aids in healing.”

Another “good side benefit” of a network of specialty centers is that it will create more “teach and train” facilities for medical students enrolled under the Doktor Para Sa Bayan Act,” Recto.

“It will create more teaching hospitals at a time when the scholarship will be supersized to 3,600 recipients this year in 16 state and 16 private schools in 15 regions,” Recto said

Recto hopes the Senate will pass the bill so the President can sign it and highlight it in his second SONA as a program he will fund in the 2024 national budget he will send to Congress.

“Laws are like doctor’s prescriptions. If not followed or taken or bought, then they remain as jottings on a piece of paper,” he said.

“Let us build these specialty centers. So for those seeking treatment, all roads must not lead to Manila. And that the best pathways should not automatically lead to the doors of private hospitals,” he said.