LINGAYEN, Pangasinan—Starting the first quarter of next year, the provincial government will shift its focus from infrastructure concerns to upgrading manpower services in hospitals to better serve local folk who cannot afford the high cost of medical treatment in private hospitals.
Gov. Amado I. Espino III stressed the need to improve hospital manpower, pointing out the increasing number of indigent patients seeking medical attention.
The ideal health service is for a doctor or nurse to attend up to 15 patients a day, the governor said, as he cited the present ironic-ratio situation in the hospitals run by the provincial government, where 70 to 80 cases are handled by a single doctor each day.
“This is way above the standard ratio,” Espino said during the recent meeting of the Provincial Development Council attended by mayors, heads of non-governmental organization and chiefs of office of the provincial government.
Better health and hospital services have always been the governor’s priority program, a flagship concern carried out by his predecessor, now Fifth District Rep. Amado T. Espino Jr.
It was during the former governor’s uninterrupted nine-year term when facilities of the provincial government’s six district hospitals underwent massive uplifting, including the putting up of a dialysis center, the first venture in the country by a local government unit.
The provincial government earned in 2014 an ISO-certification for hospital services as a result of improved quality in the handling of medical treatment of patients.
Bed capacity in the hospitals authorized by the Department of Health dramatically increased.
At the provincial hospital in San Carlos City, for instance, bed capacity ballooned to 450, from 150, in 2007. The district hospital in Alaminos City now has 100 beds, while in Urdaneta City the facility can accommodate 110 lying-in patients, a far cry from its 50-bed capacity in 2005.
Moreover, all the six district hospitals are now fully air-conditioned and equipped with modern x-ray machines and sophisticated blood and urinal test facilities.
The governor said, however, that owing to the growing number of patients, there is now a need to beef up the medical manpower in the hospitals.
The Sangguniang Panlalawigan (SP) has approved P912 million, a 20-percent increase in the 2018 budgetary outlay for health and hospital services to meet the requirements for manpower augmentation.
In other aspects of development, the governor is expected to speed up infrastructure projects on roads, bridges, school buildings, irrigation and other support structures with the acquisition of new engineering equipment.
A five-year local road-network development plan (LRNDP) is now being finalized by the Provincial Planning and Development Office (PPDO).
Funding for LRNDP, PPDO chief Benita Pizarro said, will be provided by the Department of the Interior and Local Government on a yearly basis.
Pangasinan has one of the finest road-network systems in the country with the various barangay roads connected to the provincial and national roads.