PhilHealth benefits claims reaches PHP4.39-B in Eastern Visayas

TACLOBAN CITY, Feb. 15 (PNA) -– Benefits payments of the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) in Eastern Visayas has reached PHP4.39 billion in 2015, representing a 48.7 percent increase compared to the PHP2.95 billion that the state-run firm paid to its members.

PhilHealth Regional Vice President Walter F. Bacareza said that about 85 percent of patients in the region have availed the benefits from their office last year with most of them are victims of super typhoon Yolanda.

“The unprecedented benefit payment is attributed to the number of accredited facilities, heightened awareness of people about PhilHealth benefits, and the all-can-avail policy for Eastern Visayas after the super typhoon,” Bacareza said.

The amount paid last year is four times more than what the health insurance has reimbursed in 2012. 

The upward trend in benefit payment has raised the optimism of PhilHealth regional office here to hit the PHP6 billion claims this year.

The most common claims last year were expenses for normal newborn care package, pneumonia, birth deliveries, hemodialysis, acute gastroenteritis, urinary tract infection, hypertension, animal bite, kidney diseases, and pulmonary complications in the newborn.

To achieve the PHP6 billion claims target, the Eastern Visayas regional office has kicked off piloting this month an offline system where encoding of claims are being done in hospitals in the bid to reduce turnaround time.

“We are introducing a system exclusive for Region 2 and Region 8 where hospital staff encode data, save it to a flash drive and manually transfer the file to our computer,” Bacareza explained.

The official admitted that the payment process was delayed after Yolanda due to damaged equipments and majority of PhilHealth staff was relocated to Cebu.

“In September 2013, we were the fastest in the country. When Yolanda struck on November 2013, the payment process was disrupted. In 2014, there was no processing of claims for six months despite rapid increase of claims due to the all-can-avail policy,” he added.

During the pre-Yolanda months, the regional office here used to process claims for 16 days. Last year, the average was 54 days. Under the new system, PhilHealth Eastern Visayas is targeting to cut the average claims processing period to only six days.

At an average, the region has been processing claims of about 2,500 patients daily, majority of them are poor families whose premium are being sponsored by the central government through funds generated from Sin Tax Law. (PNA)

FFC/SARWELL Q. MENIANO