Research News

Source: Health Care Asia Magazine: Philippines sighted to spend $17.16b on healthcare

The approval of the universal healthcare bill is speeding up expenses in the country.

Ever since the Philippine senate approved the Universal Healthcare Bill (UHC) on October 2018, the healthcare spending in the Philippines has experienced a sharp acceleration with a higher spending per capita as well as on a sectoral level, according to Fitch Solutions.

The bill, which aims to provide more affordable healthcare to Filipinos, has given way for a generous allotment of the state budget to the country’s healthcare sector.

Fitch reckons the healthcare spending to rise by 11.48% YoY in 2019 to $17.16b (PHP894.42b), up from $16.64b (PHP802.18b) in 2018. In line with this, spending growth is expected to continually accelerate by an average annual growth rate of 11.7% over the next four years to reach PHP1,395.356b ($26.715b) in 2023.

In per capita terms, this translates into an increase from $156 in 2018 to $158.8 in 2019 through to $234.4 by the close of 2023.

More specifically, the country’s spending growth will be fuelled by government support, with state spending forecast to account for a 42.01% share of total health spending in the country in 2019, up from a 40.55% share a year earlier.

This has also improved investment sentiment into the country’s health sector, wherein a recent partnership involving US buyout firm KKR and Singapore state investment vehicle GIC is set to invest US$685m on one of the Philippines’ largest hospital operators, Metro Pacific Hospital Holdings Incorporated (MPHHI), acquiring a 6.25% holding for US$100m.

Another milestone for the Region 1 Health Research and Development Consortium, for their funded research project by Dr. Mercita Queddeng, Dr. Cheryll Didi Nellie Obra, and Dr. Eleano Cynthia Nisperos, on 2012, has been published by the LAMBERT Academic Publishing. Entitled “Health Seeking Behaviors of the Indigenous Peoples of Ilocos” the study investigated the interplay of health needs, health seeking behaviors, and barriers to healthcare access of the Tingguians, Kankanaeys, and Bagos of Alilem

Celebrating women on health frontlines.

World Humanitarian Day is held every year on 19 August to pay tribute to aid workers who risk their lives in humanitarian service, and to rally support for people affected by crises around the world. This year, WHO honoured the work of women in crises. The article focused on the unsung heroes, who have long been working on the frontlines in their own communities in some of the most difficult terrains.

‘Measuring the performance of our healthcare system is crucial to making better policy decisions—but we need to look to the future rather than the past in deciding what to measure’, says Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association Chief Executive Alison Verhoeven.

‘And what matters most in modernised reformed health systems is what matters to patients—value, affordability and outcomes.’

Ms Verhoeven was responding to today’s release of a new online Australian Health Performance Framework by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW). The Framework is described as ‘a tool to support reporting on Australia’s health and healthcare performance’. It supersedes and replaces other frameworks.

‘The AIHW states that this is an initial release of already-existing data to support consultation ahead of a main release towards the end of 2019’, Ms Verhoeven said.

‘My feedback and that of our members to the AIHW and governments is that at the moment the framework looks heavily “input-centric”. It is looking backwards and counting numbers of consultations, health system costs, numbers of admissions for condition X, numbers of consultations (not people) bulk-billed, and so on.

‘These things are obviously important, but they are not the only game in town.