Healthcare

Philippine healthcare is a complex system of many components such as primary healthcare, hospital care, laboratory services, pharmaceutical and health products, and health financing.  It has two systems – the government-led public sector and the private sector health systems, to which the latter is estimated to cover over 60% of the health services of the country. The government-led health care is divided into the national government services and the devolved local government services.

One of the most important issues at hand, and one which the recent pandemic amplified, was the scarcity of health professionals and workers across the sector’s various disciplines to respond to the needs of the Philippines. While there are over 50 medical schools in the country, the doctor to population ratio is 1 to 33,000. There are 333 schools offering a nursing program, but a large proportion of nurses have migrated overseas to work, and many nurses here are underemployed, meaning they have sought other non-health related jobs. Access to medicine is one of the agenda of the government, but there are not enough pharmacists in the country to expand the number of drugstores given the rigid regulations on pharmacists in every drugstore. While Barangay health workers (BHW) exist, they are largely under the supervision of the local government. BHWs are technically volunteers and are not able to provide more substantive healthcare coverage for the communities they serve.

Health financing is covered in two ways – first, the government national health insurance program where citizens pay a premium that is pooled and provided to hospitalized patients to ensure financial risk protection. Recently the Universal Health Care Act of 2019 seeks to improve health access and outcomes but are challenged with delayed reimbursement and the lack of clarity for the outpatient Konsulta program to be rolled out. Second, the private Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) that are available for additional coverage and cover an estimated 6-7% of the population, primarily those working in corporate industry settings.

These current challenges are being addressed, however, the needs of the future are still ambiguous. Do we have a future ready health workforce?