It's been a while since I made a rant about local health care policies. I missed this. Let me rant.
Prelude:
More benefits are now covered by our country's universal health care insurance, now people who couldn't afford healthcare can access these benefits. But it didn't correct the other systemic issues present in the system why our healthcare system is failing.
It's not unreasonable to have people expecting they get treated well in public hospitals as a bare minimum. But understand that the types that would usually go to these institutions would be people who couldn't afford going to a private hospital. And since most of the population are in the poverty or one hospitalization away from poverty, you expect these places tend to be congested.
It got even more congested now that there are more benefits offered to patients for availing health care services. Don't get me wrong, I like that more people can now access to more benefits for illnesses previously not covered by our universal health care insurance systems but this didn't translate to increasing more facilities and healthcare personnel in the country. You instead added more reasons for public hospitals, and some private hospital to get more congested.
I repeat, hindi naman nadagdagan mga hospital, room, healthcare personnel, nagdagdagan lang yung mga rason ng tao para magpakonsulta at ma congest ang hospital dahil libre na yung ibang health care packages para sa mga sakit na nararanasan nila.
Other systemic problems the layman wouldn't notice because their hospital stay is transient and it's more visible from the administrative side of things, even if it directly affects them too:
You can increase the budget for hiring more skilled personnel but you're still going to find shortage of applicants. The fact that our skilled professionals are just trying to accumulate job experience while waiting for their VISA to get processed and work abroad is a real problem. There's more incentive to work outside with high wages for the same type of work here. So what the people are left with are new graduates to fill the numbers with skilled personnel waiting for their retirement in the government.
A bigger emergency room/ward, or more bed capacity doesn't solve the problem of efficiency. Let's say an ER has a 100 bed capacity and there are still more patients coming in, increasing the number of beds or space isn't going to make things better, you just increased the number of patients in while flooding the workload on the existing small personnel on duty therefore diminishing the quality of care. Why not increase the personnel too? go back to the above point + budget constraints in hiring with limited slots.
Having more budget to pay people doesn't necessarily mean better quality of care. This one is just my personal take after reflecting on my own salary. I get paid well relative to my peers in other industries and this country's cost of living but it doesn't necessarily mean good job satisfaction. I like my job but I can't say the same for my peers who are in the same field and well compensated while dragging their feet to work. You can say what you want about sworn oaths and etc, but how many people out there can honestly enjoy doing what they are paid to do? do they do it because it puts food on the table or it makes them fulfilled while also doing the former?
It's easy to shift the blame to a face than acknowledge a systemic or culture problem. Blame the healthcare personnel than accepting that it was the patient's choice to listen to a faith healer, a neighbor's health opinion, a politician, and deity worshipped first before coming for a health consult just when things already got worst. It's amazing how people would listen to the radio ads about health or influencer's opinion before coming in for consult. They take legal advice from a lawyer, a tax advice from an accountant or bookkeeper, and a health advice from everyone but a doctor gets considered last. I'm not saying this is what happens all the time but it does happen a lot of the time in public hospitals. So we get manageable illnesses turned worse because it took a while for them to come and have themselves get checked.
Lines. This is a common complaint that is timeless about availing public health services. This is expected considering the ratio of institutions and personnel that's supposed to be catering to the public is low. There are probably around 600+ psychiatrists in the country now. Some of those members are retiring and there's not enough applicants to sustain the replacement level while there's a growing debt of personnel needed to address growing mental health issues across the country. I'm seeing a progressive rise in number of cases since January of the year and what used to be the extremes in census now became the average number of patients consulted per day. But on the patient's perspective, it's just longer lines to see the doctor for their appointment. We get tired too but the show goes on.
Just my snippets of thoughts
Thanks for your time.