Dec. 17, 2012 SERBISYO SA KATAWHAN S.S.K.

. Program of the Iligan Medical Center Hospital Date Launched: June 2012 Mission: 1. To place the medical services of Iligan Medical Center Hospital, a private hospital, within reached of the less fortunate populace of Iligan city and its neighboring areas. 2. To erase from the mentality of the poor that public hospitals are the only place they can avail of to solve their medical needs. 3. To bring to mind to the physician that their services are not only for those who can pay. That, we, doctors, also have a moral and social obligation to extend help to the poor. The responsibility enshrined inthe Hippocratic Oath we took. 4. To help PHIC in propagating their primary mission of medical assistance toall Filipinos especially the poor. Vision: 1. To make available to all, especially the poor, quality medical care. 2. Initiate and bring about changes in the system of delivering medical care for the poor.

This SerbisyoSaKatawhan, dubbed as S.S.K., is probably the first of its kind in the country undertaken by a private hospital to extend medical assistance and services to the poor. It brings the seemingly costly hospitalization in a private hospital down to a reachable level of the poor without sacrificing quality medical attendance.This idea came into the mind of the people of Iligan Medical Center Hospital after the city experienced, for the first time, the tragic destruction to lives and propertiesby typhoon Sendong last December 16, 2011. The very sad and horrifying experience of the incident probably awakened the human nature amongst us. It was the poor who suffered most and we felt guilty if we do not something about it. Hence, in this small way, we thought that we could alleviate the torment our poor brothers and sisters fate. The idea was indeed noble but then we, as a private hospital, does not receive any form of subsidy from any philanthropic organization nor any government agency. The hospital needs operational funds, from the cotton balls to the electric consumption to run the institution and we need as well to pay salaries to our employees, some of whom were even Sendong victims themselves. We had to find our way to be of help to the poor at the same time go on with the operations of the hospital. The idea dwindled in our minds for some time until after some brainstorming; the idea of SerbisyoSaKatawhan was born. This was done through the help of the benefits that a patient gets by being a member of the PHIC. With the small amount the

hospital gets from PHIC for its members who are admitted, the hospital was able to roll the earnings to sustain the operating expenses of the hospital. This endeavor was improved and refined after three months of trial runs. It was inspired by the so-called sponsored PHIC card holders where we saw the scheme to be feasible. We started with only a single room to house these sponsored patients and we observed that we can do it in a bigger scale. With that three month experience we embarked into a more gigantic aspiration of involving a greater number of patients. But before the start of the campaign, we had to prepare a lot of loose ends. First and most important, we had to talk and convinced some physicians, with noble hearts, who would accept and treat our SSK patients with the least expense on top of what the PHIC has to offer. Indeed, we were able to enroll quite a number of physicians from different fields of specialties who thought of the project as noble and worthy. Next, we had to do some adjustments on our fees; from the E.R. fee, room rates, laboratory fees to be truly poor-friendly. Likewise, improvements were done on our rooms and other facilities to better accommodate patients and make them feel really well-taken cared of. Similarly, we prepared some all-in packages for normal spontaneous deliveries or by caesarean section which entails as low as P1,300 and P25,000 respectively. Where can you get these low fees when current komadrona deliveries dictates P4 to P5 thousands and the usual CS deliveries nowadays starts with no less than P50,000 to about P70,000 with ward accommodation. Next, we were confronted with the local mentality or this could be a national impression that private hospitals are more expensive over government ones. That, despite being members of PHIC, hospitalization in a private hospital entails prohibitive fees. Little did they know that because of the overwhelming admissions in government hospitals, even if they were supposed to enjoy benefit from PHIC from the moment they enter the Emergency Room, still they are not served with the immediate drugs or IV fluids because the hospitals supply had long been exhausted. They end up receiving prescription to buy the needed medicines or incidental items instead of getting them outright upon admission. It is also not uncommon to see in government hospitals where one bed is shared by two or even 4 patients. With the sheer number of patients admitted likewise, the accommodation cannot be taken cared of properly; rooms are crowded, they are not cleaned regularly, toilets are not decently cleaned and most of all, medical attendance, especially by nurses who are the key to a hospital operation, are not delivered properly or at the least promptly. All these are because of the over-admissions since government institution are mandated to accept all patients who wish to be admitted. Government funding to the hospital similarly cannot cope up with the number of patients.This one challenge we have to address directly if we want to entice the lower bracket populace to seek into a private hospital. With this predicament in mind we strategized to conduct city-wide campaign to promote our SSK program. We need to stress the fact that the poor may avail the benefits of PHIC from private hospital without necessarily shelling-out extra money at the same time enjoying the attention, accommodation and medical expertise of a private patient. On top of these, we disseminated that under the SSK program we lowered further our fees on all hospital departments. Even with the professional fees, we assured them that our SSK doctors were pre-

informed to ask for minimal Professional Fees and SSK patients may haggle or negotiate with their attending physicians, a practice not common in many hospitals. On the internal aspect of the campaign, we requested the full cooperation of our personnel, especially who are directly involved with patient-care. To supplement all these, we offered free medical consultations on certain days of the week and free pre-natal consultations once a week. Four months after the start of the campaign and after going to different barangays once a week, the strategy proved correct. Feed-backs from patients were very encouraging. Our OBGYN department got the most praises. One testimony came from a mother who had delivered at our hospital where she cannot believe that she paid only P1,300 for the delivery. Another mother, commended the hospital for an operation, herniorrhapy, of her child where she paid only P20,000, inclusive of everything, whereas, it would have cost her between P45,000 to P60,000 for the operation. These are only two of the many heartening words we received from our patients. Six & a half months of campaign and we already could see big a difference; we are only half through with our target number of campaigns to perform. Our daily census rose from 12-14 to about 25-28 patients per day; room utilization is now almost 100% (in fact, at times, we had to refuse admissions there being no more room available); we used to operate only one Nurses Station, now, weve open all three stations. To summarize the scheme, to are happy to have attained our mission of helping the poor and glad to prove that