Calls to One Hospital Command Center up since late July —exec

The number of calls to the One Hospital Command Center (OHCC), the country’s hospital referral system, has gone up since the last week of July, its operations manager said Thursday.

Dr. Bernadett Velasco said the OHCC received an average of 300 calls per day in July, higher than the 100 to 120 daily calls recorded in June. In the past three days alone, the average number of calls hit 600, with 730 calls received on August 4.

“Ang trend po natin is increasing ‘yung (the trend is an increasing) number of calls that’s why we decided to come up with a surge capacity plan,” she said in a health department forum.

Velasco pointed out that the figures only refer to the number of calls received, not the number of “events” recorded by the OHCC.

“Meron kasing mga clients that they have multiple requests and multiple times sila tatawag pero it’s just created into one event. So multiple ‘yung needs nila, pero created as one lang kaya lumiliit siya on the reported na events,” she said.

(Some clients have multiple requests and call multiple times but it’s just created into one event. So they have multiple needs, but these are considered one and that’s why the reported events are lower.)

Velasco noted that most of the calls are from Metro Manila, Calabarzon, and Central Luzon. The OHCC also receives calls from Filipinos abroad seeking assistance with medical repatriation, among other concerns.

However, Velasco said improvements in the OHCC’s system have allowed it to accept up to 40 calls at a time. A new mechanism also queues callers on the line and records their phone numbers so that they can be contacted if they drop the call while waiting.

Recently, the OHCC moved its headquarters to the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City and expanded its services to offer teleconsulting. 

“We’re also tapping again our-partner call centers so they can answer ‘yung mga overflows natin na calls (overflow calls),” Velasco said.

The OHCC may be reached through hotline 1555, 02-886-505-00, 0915-777-7777, or 0919-977-3333.

Metro Manila is set to revert to a strict lockdown on August 6 to curb the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. 

On Wednesday, the Philippine COVID-19 tally surpassed 1.62 million cases with 1.53 million recoveries and 28,231 deaths as of Wednesday afternoon. —LBG, GMA News