GENERAL SANTOS CITY (MindaNews/17 November) — The city government is pushing for another major upgrading and expansion next year of the city’s hospital’s operations and vital facilities.
City Mayor Ronnel Rivera said Thursday they are currently working on the allocation of additional funding to facilitate the expansion of the bed capacity of the local government-operated Dr. Jorge P. Royeca Hospital to 200 beds.
“We will prioritize that next year to enable our hospital to serve more people and render better services,” he said.
Aside from increasing the bed capacity, the mayor said the local government will hire additional personnel for the facility, especially doctors and nurses.
Local government records listed the city hospital as a 100-bed secondary facility, but its daily admission reach as high as 390 patients.
The hospital presently caters to residents of the city and the neighboring municipalities in Sarangani and South Cotabato provinces.
Glenvil Gonzales, assistant city administrator for administration, said the hospital’s admission rate has steadily increased these past years.
He attributed the “overflowing patients” to the increased trust and confidence of local residents to its services.
Aside from the lack of beds, he said the city hospital presently needs six resident doctors.
“We have a budget for such purpose but there are no applicants so far,” said Gonzales, who heads the hospital’s special action team.
Some of the doctors previously hired by the hospital had resigned to go abroad or “seek greener pastures,” he said.
He said they experienced the same problem with their nurses.
As part of the priority improvements, Gonzales said they are presently working on the upgrading the hospital’s laboratory to a tertiary level facility.
He said the initiative will make the laboratory fully automated and at par with those of private hospitals.
“The upgrading of the laboratory is a primary requirement for our plans to seek the city hospital’s accreditation by next year into a Level II facility,” he said.
Based on the DOH’s classification standards, a Level II hospital should have completed the basic requirements for a secondary level facility; have departmentalized clinical services; and, operational respiratory unit, general intensive care unit, high risk pregnancy unit, neonatal intensive care unit, tertiary clinical laboratory, blood station and a second level x-ray with mobile unit. (MindaNews)