Ownership of coop hospitals open to all

I am Jose M. Tiongco. I graduated from the UP College of Medicine and later took surgical training at the Philippine General Hospital Department of Surgery. Shortly after, I left for Vienna, Austria, to train in the Department of Neurosurgery, University of Vienna. Upon my return to the Philippines, I worked as the chair of the Department of Surgery of Davao Medical Center (now Southern Philippines Medical Center), the biggest—and the best!—hospital in the country, now being run by Dr. Leopoldo Vega who also trained under my department in my time.

I write this in reaction to Ramon Tulfo’s column which noted that Health Secretary Paulyn Jean Rosell Ubial is a secret owner of the first Filipino hospital in Qatar (“Ubial’s confirmation in limbo,” Metro, 5/23/17).

First, a backgrounder: Twenty-five years ago, as a response to the fragmented and grossly unequal distribution of health care delivery (by both government and private institutions) in the country, I helped found the Medical Mission Group Hospitals and Health Services Cooperative (MMGHHSC). We established the first-ever MMGHHSC hospitals in the country in Davao City and Tagum City, Davao del Norte. These were, at first, owned not only by the doctors and health professionals but also by all the workers of the hospitals, including utility—as all cooperatives should be. We later extended the ownership of these hospitals to everyone in the community—like the patients and their families.

As the idea of a community-owned hospital caught fire and spread all over the Philippines, we established MMGHHSC Philippines Federation, now composed of 22 hospitals and health services primary cooperatives in Luzon, the Visayas, and Mindanao. Sadly, the first hospital cooperative we set up in Davao City is not at present a member of good standing. But that is another story.

In the 25 years of our existence as cooperatives, we never gave up on the idea of establishing similar cooperatives all over the world, especially in areas hosting a substantial number of overseas Filipino workers.

It was in Qatar where we were finally able to make a breakthrough. As we write, we have 14 MMGHHSC chapters in Doha, Qatar, and we are in the process of organizing even more, looking at a potential membership of 300,000 Filipinos. We are now also in the process of organizing the MMGHHSC in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, getting very enthusiastic responses from some of the 900,000 overseas Filipinos there. We envision the cooperative way as the best way not only to serve the health needs of OFWs but also to establish them as a significant economic presence in their host countries.

I must confess this is quite a novel idea, something the Cooperative Development Authority is still coming to grips with, as evidenced by the seven-month delay in the registration of the first MMGHHSC chapter consisting of members residing outside the country.

But it was the Department of Health, headed by Secretary Ubial, that immediately took up the idea of serving our countrymen’s health needs abroad. She first heard of our plans in December 2016 when I asked her to help us obtain an equivalency agreement with the State of Qatar so our specialist doctors could practice their specialties in Filipino hospitals there. By January 2017, she had already personally conferred with her counterpart in Qatar, the minister of public health. By February 2017, the equivalency agreement was approved.

Last April 2017 she was in Doha, Qatar with the presidential entourage and was kind enough to spend some time with the newly formed MMGHHSC International, discussing our plans for the establishment of Filipino cooperative hospitals all over the Arabian Peninsula.

For Tulfo’s information, Dr. Ubial is not yet a member of our cooperative. But we hope she will be. And we hope, as well, that Tulfo himself will be.

The ownership of a cooperative, especially a Filipino cooperative, is never a secret. It should be open to everybody—as MMGHHSC hospitals’ is.

DR. JOSE M. TIONGCO, chief executive officer, MMGHHSC