A group of private hospitals warned Friday that some of its members might not renew their accreditation with Philippine Health Insurance Corporation over unpaid claims of COVID-19 cases from last year.
Dr. Jose Rene De Grano, president of Private Hospitals Association of the Philippines Inc., said some private hospitals, including in Metro Manila, would release in November a position paper on whether or not they were cutting ties with the state insurer if the issue remained unresolved.
"Many of them may not renew with PhilHealth next year because of what they have experienced, which is there is no concrete solution from PhilHealth from the last 2 or 3 months,” he said in an interview on Teleradyo.
Most COVID-19 claims from 2020 remain unpaid, he added.
Last week, in a Laging Handa press briefing, De Grano said PhilHealth still owed at least P834 million to some private hospitals in General Santos, Iloilo and Northern Luzon.
At a Senate hearing, the state insurer also admitted to delays in processing of claims for COVID-19 cases.
“We are so swamped with an increase in claims. Can you just imagine, in 2020, we had an average of daily claims of 31,000, and the average number of claims now is 39,000. Which means that is a job increase of 26 percent," PhilHealth chief Dante Gierran had said. (See full story online at manilastandard.net)
PhilHealth was also facing a manpower shortage, he added.
"We blame it again on the pandemic because we have a limited locomotive, some of our people got sick, as matter of fact, some of our people even died. And we cannot tell everybody that we have this problem, but we are doing something about it," Gierran said.
However, De Grano said those allegedly questionable claims being investigated by PhilHealth should not affect the reimbursement of unpaid dues to other hospitals, which they used for their day-to-day operations.
"If they have proof of these supposedly fraudulent claims, then file a case. But still, that's still a small percentage,” he said.
"If there are fraudulent cases or claims, why let others suffer?” he also said.