The Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) on Wednesday (Dec. 15) assured its members that the payment of claims will continue and that the corporation has enough funds for said reimbursement of claims.
“The issue here is delayed payments of PhilHealth reimbursements to these hospitals. We are continuously reaching out to these hospitals. We are implementing several reforms and we are reaching out to these hospitals to alert any situation that will not be good for our members,” PhilHealth Spokesperson Dr. Shirley Bajamonde Domingo said during the Presidential Spokesperson public briefing.
This was after she was asked about the hospitals in Iloilo that have expressed their intentions to disengage with PhilHealth.
“Let me reassure our members that PhilHealth is on top of the situation by implementing strategies to fast track funds to our hospitals,” Domingo said.
Domingo, in dispelling the notion that PhilHealth is not paying its claims, said that the corporation has been paying since January 2020.
“Today, we have paid around P165 billion in claims reimbursements. To these hospitals in Iloilo, we have released P1.6 billion in claims reimbursements from January 2020 to today,” she said.
Another issue that was brought up was the return-to-hospital claims which are claims that were returned to hospitals because of deficiencies.
“Let me assure you that we do this because we are in keeping with our responsibility to safeguard the interest of our members and to protect the funds given to us. These are public funds kasi kaya dapat protektahan natin ito,” Domingo said.
“We assure also that we have enough funds to pay for the liabilities or to pay for the claims of our members that are coming into PhilHealth. As of June this year, we have P158 billion reserved funds. Our cash is enough to pay our liabilities which are the claims, therefore the issue of money is not a problem.” – PG – bny
