he Philippine public healthcare system has extensively evolved throughout the years, earning several milestones under the Performance Governance System (PGS). This year, the public health sector has gained yet another PGS Institutionalized hospital, as the Region 1 Medical Center (R1MC) officially completed the final stage of the PGS pathway last January 30, earning the coveted “Islands of Good Governance” title.
R1MC set out on its voyage along the PGS Pathway in 2019 with a Gold Trailblazer award during its conferment of the Initiated status. Despite the challenges brought about by the pandemic and the transition to the new normal, the hospital has been able to successfully continue the execution of its strategy and achieve several milestones in its roadmap.
Pursuant to its mission to provide affordable and quality subspecialty services to its constituents, R1MC positions itself as the “preferred multi-specialty hospital in Northern Luzon by 2024.”
Dr. Jocelyn C. De Guzman, R1MC PGS Core Team Chairperson, presented their efforts and initiatives to turn their strategic position into reality. One of the initiatives they took on was establishing their telemedicine program. Using their information system during the conduct of Telemedicine, consultations are done with ease and at the convenience of the patient’s homes. Moreover, to ensure the confidentiality of patient records, data from these consultations are uploaded to their cloud servers which are equipped with a firewall for network security.
During the panel evaluation, led by Insitute for Solidarity in Asia (ISA) Trustee, Mr. Rex C. Drilon II, Dr. De Guzman shared the steps they are undertaking to further the promotion of employee satisfaction and retention of healthcare workers, given the challenge of retention and recruitment.
“We established an employee satisfaction survey. To further boost their morale in terms of their job, we also have a praise program for awards and incentives where we, at the end of the year, do give awards to special employees who have performed exemplary in the past year. We do that every year,” she said.
Dr. De Guzman also shared their practices in advocating for not only their patients but their practitioners and staff. She shared that as an incentive, they send their personnel to other facilities for training, increasing their chances of earning a higher salary grade when they return to their practice.
“Management has been very supportive of all of these. For example for physicians who graduate from their residency training programs here, the hospital supports them on their way to subspecialty by actually helping them to go to the lateral entry. So while on training, they are still being salaried or subsidized by R1MC,” Dr. De Guzman said.
Following their conferral of the PGS Institutionalized status, R1MC looks forward to continuing its practices until they reach its goal of becoming the premier tertiary end-referral hospital in Northern Luzon.
On behalf of R1MC, Chief Medical Professional Staff, Dr. Arnel Gazmen humbly expressed his gratitude towards the esteemed panel and ISA for the recognition.
“When we embarked on this journey, we thought of the citizens of the Republic of the Philippines, those particularly from our province Pangasinan, and the nearby provinces. We did not think of ourselves because in this endeavor we dedicate all of this to our citizens who need quality healthcare. Rest assured that we will continue with the ideals and goals of good governance to help our country to move forward,” he said.
