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Posts published in “Policy”

PhilHealth to abolish single confinement policy by end of September   

September 11, 2024

Kaycee Valmonte, writing for Rappler;

The Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) will soon scrap its single confinement policy.

PhilHealth President Emmanuel Ledesma Jr. told a Senate panel on Tuesday, September 10, that they are committed to making the changes needed “before month-end.”

This is great news to all PhilHealth members.

This means that if a patient was confined due to diarrhea in September and had PhilHealth cover the expenses, the patient has to shoulder the fees if another bout of diarrhea strikes again in October.

Some patients were supposedly told to lie in order to have their hospital bills covered by the state insurer. A mother named Elena Abilar, through a video presented to the Senate panel, recounted her experience with the single confinement rule when her son had pneumonia and had to be hospitalized twice.

PhilHealth did not need to create the “Single confinement policy” in the first place.

President Duterte approved the implementation of Alert Level System for COVID-19 Response for the whole country

November 11, 2021

President Duterte just signed Executive Order No. 151 (EO 151), which is the adoption of Alert Level System (ALS) for COVID-19 Response for the whole country.

In the EO, the rollout of ALS will be in 4 phases. The pilot areas where ALS is already implemented will be consider as the first phase and other regions will follow in the succeeding phase.

Here is the breakdown of the phases;
Phase 1 – NCR, Region 3, 4-A, 6, 7, 10 and 11
Phase 2 – Region 1, 8 and 12
Phase 3 – Region 2, 5 and 9
Phase 4 – Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR), Region 4-B, Region 13 (CARAGA) and the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM)

The shift to Phase 2 can be done anytime after the effectivity of the EO, as determined by Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases but will not be later than the end of the November 2021. The next phase will then take place every week until it covers the whole country.

The guideline for the implementations of ALS in Pilot area and its amendments will be approved by the IATF once the EO is in effect. For regions not under the ALS, Community Quarantine will still be implemented.

You can read the full text of Executive Order No. 151 below;