A Health Care Provider may be an individual (health

worker) or an institution (health facility) which carries out a

broad function of providing health care services to health care
consumers which may be an individual or a community.
In the Philippines, the term may refer to any of the following a
public or a private health care institution, a health care
professional, a health maintenance organization or a
community-based health care organization, as defined in the
National Health Insurance Act of 1995.
The health care providers are an essential part of the health
care system. This sector can profoundly influence the health
outcomes of the country. And it is because of this that
policies and plans should be created to protect and
strengthen this sector to succeed over numerous challenges
in the health care system.
Challenges
Perhaps the top challenge is the fragmentation of health care.
This fragmentation is demonstrated in the Philippines by the
huge gaps between public health care and clinical medicine, the
dichotomy between public and private health services, the
factions of general practitioners and subspecialty medical care,
and the difference between central government health services
with a devolved local government health system of care.
The next challenge the lack of accountability among
institutions and sector leaders further worsens the situation of
the health system. There are inconsistencies between the
central government and the devolved local government health
which are exacerbated by disparities among policy-makers and
program managers in the levels of implementation.
The third challenge is the exclusivity of the health care system.
It takes a society to heal a patient. We often forget that the
improvement of access to health care involves the entire
community and is multi-disciplinary.
Ignoring these challenges and their corresponding probable
solutions, or even not addressing these challenges properly
ions
will make the society suffer. The Government is perceived as
abdicating its important role in maintaining the health and
welfare. Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)
mushroom to patch some of the gaps but does it inefficiently
due to fragmentation.
An example of a possible solution that is receiving
inadequate attention is the area of Information and
Communication Technologies (ICT) for health. ICT promises
cost-effective solutions to limited access to health services
but there are difficulties in getting the facts through the
policy-makers and regulatory bodies. In addition, there are
trust issues in working with the engineers and the private
sector to create the software and platforms and to translate
the technology into application, respectively.
Innovations as responses to challenges
One significant innovation is Health Financing and its
various models. Though some experts disagree due to the
scale of expenditures, and the Government not seeing the
investment value of pouring in large sums of money in health
care; health financing is acknowledged as a critical trigger to
drive the performance of the other building blocks for health
systems strengthening. The potential benefits are better
access to health care and improved capacity of human
resources for health. The downside, however, is the
inadequate budget allocation for health due to the fear of
having insufficient resources and the fear of the inability to
catch up to rising inflation costs of health care.
In the Philippines, the drivers for health care innovations
include the Health Sector Reform Agenda, the Universal
Health Care and lastly, the Private Public Partnerships for
Health. Local private sectors appear to be open and
supportive to health care innovations.
Within the next 10 years, it is worth mentioning that the key
driver to watch out for in Asia is a new initiative called NIHA
(National University of Singapore Initiative to improve Health
in Asia).
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The note reflects the opinion of the executive director of the AIM Zuellig Center for Asian Business Transformation. It does not reflect the official stand of AIM.
CONTACT US: The AIM Dr Stephen Zuellig Center for Asian Business Transformation (ZCABT). Room 509, AIM Conference Center Manila.
Benavides corner Trasierra Street, Legaspi Village, Makati City 1260. Tel. No. (632) 892-4011 local 2073. Email: zuellig.center@aim,edu