The Quezon City government has intensified efforts to bring the city closer to achieving the health aspects of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, as it partnered with United Laboratories Inc. (Unilab) in launching its online information-exchange database, which seeks to provide quicker and more accessible maternal and neonatal health services to its citizens.
The city government, headed by Mayor Herbert M. Bautista, and the QC Health Department (QCHD), unveiled during the recent fifth Maternal and Neonatal Health Summit, the “Seal of Excellence [SoE] Plus,” as part of its continuing efforts to innovate its health services.
The city partnered with Unilab, the leading health-care company in the country, in the undertaking.
“The objective of this program is to determine and improve the health services given by both the government and private sector when it comes to maternal health and child care,” Bautista said.
The SoE Plus allows SoE-awarded lying-in clinics in Quezon City to immediately synchronize, through Internet, their respective postpartum and newborn profiles using the prescribed reporting template with the local government’s database.
Pilot sites
SafeBirth Lying-in Clinic, one of the awardees of this year’s Seal of Excellence Award, is one of the pilot sites of the SoE Plus. SafeBirth has four branches in Quezon City—at Congressional Avenue, Payatas, Novaliches and Catalan. It has been a consistent awardee for full compliance to Department of Health (DOH) and local government standards.
“SafeBirth is a social enterprise established to provide affordable maternal and newborn services to the less privileged members of the society. Its objective is to ensure that mothers receive adequate and quality health care from the time that they conceive to the time that they deliver their babies. Any complicated cases are referred immediately to hospitals,” said Luz Maria Theresa C. Garcia, MD. “With SoE Plus, we can improve the documentation of our patients’ records, which will facilitate seamless submission of reports and documents in coordination with the health centers.”
Safe motherhood
SafeBirth has been advocating safe motherhood by empowering community-based midwives and giving them a facility where they could build and improve their practice, thus, helping decrease home births.
Since its opening in 2012, it has ensured the safety of over 2,000 pregnant women and their babies by adhering to safe delivery practices, such as complete prenatal care, birth planning, essential intrapartum newborn care, maternal and newborn supplementation, immunization and exclusive breastfeeding, among others.
Furthermore, patients are encouraged to enroll in Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) so that they can avail themselves of the No Balance Billing benefit.
“We are happy to support the efforts of the Quezon City Health Department in making sure that pregnant women are given proper care and services. Through the years, we’ve had patients who have sought our help in their second and third pregnancies, which indicated their trust and confidence in our services,” Garcia said.
“While some of the patients may not be able to give birth in our facility due to some complications during their pregnancy, we remain committed in referring them immediately to tertiary hospitals being a member of QC’s Safe Delivery Network.”
Expansion
The implementation of SoE PLUS is part of the city government’s expansion of the SoE program, which recognizes private lying-in clinics (PLICs) in the city that have achieved essential Maternal Newborn Child Health and Nutrition (MNCHN) indicators.
During the Maternal and Neonatal Summit, SafeBirth and the Quezon City IT team did an on-site demonstration to discuss the features of SoE Plus.
“This is part of our efforts to achieve our global objective set by UN, which was the Millennium Development Goals before, and now the SDGs,” Bautista added.
The SoE is a leadership and governance-program initiative of the Quezon City government, which aims to improve constant and consistent availability and access to safe, effective, efficient, youth-oriented and gender-transformative health services.
Quezon City, which has a total population of 3,014,042, vowed to improve its maternal and neonatal health services in its bid to reduce, and as much as possible, avoid mortality.
Claire D. Papa, external affairs head of Unilab, said the company is committed to helping local government units (LGUs) improve their maternal and child health services to achieve the priorities stated under the UN SDGs by 2030.
“It is for this reason that we partnered with the Quezon City Health Department almost 10 years ago, when we started our goal to help this city to improve its health-services delivery through the health centers,” Papa said.
“That’s why we launched the SoE last year, which identifies fully complying private lying-in with the DOH and local government requirements. Being in the business of health, it is important that service providers be on a par with the standards set by the government,” Papa added.
Under SoE, PLICs are labeled per color depending on their level of performance: red for poor compliance; yellow means it needs improvement; and green for those that have exemplified outstanding performance.
Improvements
Data from the QCHD showed that since the launching of SoE, the number of PLICs in the city declined to 83 this year from 99 last year.
The strict evaluation set by the SoE caused 16 PLICs last year to be downgraded to a medical clinic this year.
Staying true to its commitment of high-quality health services, the QCHD, through the help of SoE, also closed four PLICs last year. Meanwhile, four new PLICs opened this year.
In 2016 only 23 of the 99 PLICs or about 23 percent of the total were tagged with green label, while the majority, or 55, of the PLICs were under red tag.
This year, the number of PLICs with green SoE tag nearly doubled to 44 clinics, or about 53 percent of the present PLICs. The number of erring PLICs declined to 31, or about 37 percent of the total, while those that needed improvement were only down to four.
“It is a must that these PLICs have passed the standards set. Compliance is a daunting task, but we are happy to share with you today that in less than a year we continue to achieve major improvements,” Papa said.
To date, Quezon City has achieved the SDG set by the UN for 2030. In 2016, it has recorded a mortality rate of 49 per 100,000 live, which is within the less than 70 deaths set by the UN by 2030.
“We want to be a model of effective governance and responsible leadership and to provide quality service,” Dr. Ramona Abarquez, QCHD MNCHN coordinator said.
Innovations
Abarquez added that the rolling out of SoE Plus would allow efficient and streamlined delivery of maternal and neonatal health services within the jurisdiction of the city government.
“The lying-in clinic knew who gave birth in the facility so the community could monitor who should be served. Thus, vaccines could be prepared for those who gave birth even if they go to other lying-in clinics,” Abarquez said in Filipino.
The SoE Plus contains valuable information about the mother and her new-born, such as the home address, PhilHealth number, outcome of delivery, date of birth, last dose of tetanus vaccine and immunization given to new-borns, among others.
Bautista announced that he plans to give financial incentives to SoE-awarded PLICs that have maintained a green status for at least four consecutive years.
“We will provide incentives to the PLICs so that they would be encouraged to sustain improving their health services for our citizens. This is like the Seal of Local Good Governance. If you become a hall of famer for SoE, then you will receive incentives from us,” he said.
Bautista also disclosed that the city government is planning to expand the SoE program to cover Quezon City-based hospitals.
“The hospital which does not abide repeatedly with the requirements would be closed,” he said in Filipino. “This goes with hospitals whcih do not comply with the rules imposed by the DOH [Department of Health] and other agencies like the PhilHealth.” The city mayor said he plans to have a dialogue with other local governments to expand the coverage of the SoE program to other jurisdictions.
“Actually, I really want this program to be extended to other cities or municipalities or provincial governments. Just looking at the presentation, I think it can be replicated,” he said.
“It does not entail that much. It is just requiring the health departments of the different LGUs to ensure that all requirements for and by the government standards be complied with by these institutions, more specifically the lying-in centers,” he added.