He noted that while non-COVID claims are being processed, claims for the treatment of COVID-19 patients are not being paid.
“There is already a decrease in the income of the hospitals from the non-COVID [cases] and they are treating COVID-19 cases that are not being paid. It is a compounded problem,” he said.“We are not able to get the total number but there’s a hospital that has a P1.2-billion claim. Merong P700 million. And the smallest for the COVID centers would be about P50 million,” he noted.“At this point parang ‘Wala kaming pakialam sainyo, magtiis kayo.
“Three days after our meeting, they came up with PhilHealth circular 2020-004 creating the debit-credit payment mechanism for the NCR bubble cities for partial payment of 60 percent of the in-process claims,” he added.“The hospitals were surprised why they had to apply,” he noted.