BAGUIO CITY — Baguio City House Representative Mark Go said on Tuesday the bill providing for the increase in the bed capacity of the government-run Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center (BGHMC) from 500 to 800 has been approved by the Senate.
Go said proponents of Senate Bill 1736, authored by Senator JV Ejercito, hope the President will soon sign it into law.
The counterpart bill in Congress, House Bill 6619, which Go had authored, was approved in the first quarter of the year.
The lawmaker explained that the increase in the capacity of the hospital is a big boost for the hospital’s patients and staff, as it goes with it an additional fund for more facilities and, perhaps, additional personnel.
BGHMC is a tertiary hospital that receives patients from the different provinces of the Cordillera, as well as Regions 1, 2, and 3.
On the sidelines of the opening program of the 2018 National Hospital Week celebration on Monday (Aug. 6), BGHMC’s Dr. Ricardo Ruñez Jr. said the bill’s approval is a welcome development as it will benefit not just Baguio residents, but also those from nearby regions.
He said hospital authorities are seeing a scenario, where the PHP1.2 billion budget of BGHMC will be increased to over PHP2 billion and the hospital staff increased to about 2,800.
He said the BGHMC is also being eyed as the trauma, heart, lung, and kidney center in Northern Luzon.
“We are moving toward the direction that all specialties will already be available here so that patients need not go to Manila just to receive specialized medical attention,” Ruñez said.
The passage of the law is also expected to increase the number of employees by about 1,000 across all divisions.
“We will be asking the DBM (Department of Budget and Management) for additional plantilla positions,” Ruñez said.
The hospital at present employs 1,300 personnel. This is aside from the over 300 job order employees, who are mostly nurses and who might be affected by the joint circular of the DBM, Department of Finance, and the Civil Service Commission, which ends the hiring of job order employees in government effective January 1, 2019.
Ruñez said BGHMC’s subsidy to thousands of indigent patients amounts to PHP400 million a year.
“We are shouldering all the expenses of our indigent patients,” which will also be addressed with the expected increase in the hospital’s operational budget, he said.
BGHMC attends to an average of 40,000 in-patients and about 400,000 out-patients annually.
As the top government hospital in Northern Luzon, Ruñez said that BGHMC is aiming to be the most outstanding hospital in the Philippines. (Liza Agoot/PNA)
