PhilHealth: Doctors should go after hospitals for delayed payment of professional fees

Doctors with unpaid shares from the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) should go after the hospitals, as the state insurer said professional fees have already been included in claims paid to medical institutions.

In a Senate hearing on Tuesday, PhilHealth senior vice president Israel Francis Pargas said the state insurer already included professional fees in the payments made to hospitals.

"As we pay the claims to the hospitals, the claims or the case rate includes the professional fees, so it is the hospitals who are to provide the professional fees to the doctors," he said.

"As per policy, once the hospitals have received the payment of their claims, they are given one month to provide it to the doctors already," he elaborated.

This comes as Senate President Senator Vicente "Tito" Sotto III questioned the delay in the payment of professional fees to doctors under the PhilHealth system.

"In our system, we have a portal that they can actually reconcile if the claims they were looking for are already paid or not and the doctors can check on this," said Pargas.

"For the professional fees, as the claims are paid, the case rate includes the profession fee," he added. —KG, GMA News