Kudos to BMC
THE
Bicol Medical Center’s novel idea of allowing cash-strapped
patients to pay their hospital bills in kind (goods and/or labor)
is a right approach to address the plight of the poor while
helping the hospital cope up with its financial woes and thus
enabling it to deliver its mandate to extend medical care and
health assistance to as many people as possible.
The brilliant idea, though quite late in coming, deserves a pat in
the back. While we have yet to see the scheme’s operating
procedures which the hospital officials admitted they are trying
to smoothen up, already we are anxious of the paradigm shift that
will come with the package.
As correctly pointed out, the “pay-in-kind-if-you-don’t-have-cash”
formula will blast the daylights off the depressing dole-out
mentality or mendicant attitude obtaining among our people when
dealing with certain government institutions which, to be sure,
also needs cash to keep the delivery of public services afloat.
The scheme will make prospective patients and their families to
tend their yards with vegetables and livestock so that when time
comes, they’ll have something to pay for their medicines,
attending doctors and other infirmary services. Able-bodied family
members of a patient may also render services – such as janitorial
and other menial jobs – whose equivalent man-hour cost will be
credited to settle the unpaid hospital bill. Helping poor people
help themselves is a virtue that validates the wise counsel that
“teaching one how to fish is a lot better than simply giving him
fish to eat for a day.” To be poor doesn’t mean one should be
dependent or passive about his pitiable plight. In these times of
limited resources worsened by hard-to-come-by opportunities, it
always pays to be industrious and self-reliant; two qualities that
earn for a man his dignity and self-respect. Verily, a man who is
less fortunate can be as productive if he wills to use his muscles
and his heart to win his day’s bread. In this world of rising
population and diminishing resources, things simply do not come
easy. Many of our people learned this the hard way at ABS-CBN’s
“Wowowee” where at least 71 people died and hundreds more were
hurt in a stampede over dole-outs and quick prizes lined up for
its no-brainer money contests.
We hope that this pay-in-kind innovation under the stewardship of
BMC Chief of Hospital Dr. Ruben R. Peñafiel will preface other
good things to come at Bicol’s largest government hospital. For a
long time, the Bicol Medical Center has been criticized as one key
institution that’s wallowing in the muck. For not a few instances,
the hospital has been taken to task for inefficiency, corruption,
manpower lack, and other deficiencies that unmake a government
hospital. These concerns, serious as they are, also need to be
addressed to finally bring the luster back to this once highly
esteemed premier government center for public health.
