Cebu Rep. Eduardo Gullas on Sunday said four hospitals in Cebu being run by the Department of Health would get a a total of P3.02 billion in new appropriations to sustain their operations in 2022, plus P335 million to further expand and upgrade their facilities.
Under the proposed P5.024-trillion General Appropriations Act of 2022, the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (will get an operating budget of P2.16 billion; Cebu South Medical Center (CSMC), P496.23 million; St. Anthony Mother and Child Hospital (SAMCH), P192.13 million, and Eversley Childs Sanitarium and General Hospital (ECSGH), P176.42 million, he said.
“The combined new funding for the operations of the four hospitals in 2022 is P310 million, or 11 percent, higher than the P2.71 billion that they are getting this year,” he noted.
“We expect CSMC in particular to stay at the forefront of the fight against COVID-19 in southern Cebu province,” he cited.
On top of their operating budgets, Gullas said the four hospitals would also receive a combined allocation of P335 million from the department’s P19.5-billion Health Facilities Enhancement Program (HFEP) in 2022.
The HFEP provides incremental funding “for the construction, upgrading or expansion of government health-care facilities and the purchase of hospital equipment for such facilities, including the improvement of facilities for COVID-19 response and the equipping and construction of on-going projects.”
“The P335 million that the four hospitals will receive from the HFEP in 2022 is 60 percent higher than the P210 million that they are getting this year from the program,” Gullas said.