Assessment of the quality of inpatient meals and nutrition and dietetics service processes in select Philippine public hospitals.

AIMS: The nutrition and dietetics service in Philippine public hospitals was implemented by the Department of Health in 2016 to standardise the daily allowance and nutritional content of inpatient meals. Five years later, it is timely for the Department of Health to assess the quality of inpatient meals and mandated nutrition processes in areas such as staffing, food service, and outcomes monitoring. METHODS: A mixed-method sequential explanatory design was employed using (1) quantitative assessment through a facility survey (n = 193 hospitals) and (2) qualitative exploration of quantitative results through 6 focus group discussions (n = 36 hospitals). RESULTS: Philippine public hospitals were unequipped with the inputs necessary to implement processes that produce high-quality meals for patients. The hospitals were unable to comply with the required minimum meal allowance (51%), nutritional content of meals (40%), and food service standards. Moreover, they had insufficient human resources and inefficient food procurement practices. CONCLUSIONS: The quality of nutrition care and inpatient meals in Philippine public hospitals, who serve mostly people on low incomes, is a neglected problem in the Philippines. Moving forward, a systems approach involving the Department of Health, its regional offices, and hospital management is necessary to equip Philippine public hospitals with the inputs and structures necessary to provide high-quality nutrition care and inpatient meals that will facilitate patient recovery and overall patient health.

Cocreation in Health Workforce Planning to Shape the Future of the Health Care System in the Philippines.

BACKGROUND: The Philippines passed landmark legislation in 2019 on universal health coverage, including reforms in the development of its health workforce, an essential building block of responsive health care systems. HEALTH WORKFORCE PLANNING COCREATION PROCESS: We based our planning process on a model of cocreation defined as sharing power and decision making to solve problems collaboratively and build consensus around action. Through cocreation with policy makers, researchers, and other stakeholders, we performed projection studies on 10 selected health professions and estimated the need for primary care at national and subnational levels, which was the most extensive health workforce projection carried out by the Philippine Department of Health to date. We determined health workforce requirements based on target densities recommended by the World Health Organization and a health needs approach that considered epidemiological and sociodemographic factors. In consultation with stakeholders, we interpreted our analysis to guide recommendations to address issues related to health workforce quantity, skill mix, and distribution. These included a broad range of proposals, including task shifting, expanding scholarships and deployment, reforming health professionals' education, and pursuing a whole-of-society approach, which together informed the National Human Resources for Health Master Plan. CONCLUSIONS: Our cocreation model offers lessons for policy makers, program managers, and researchers in low- and middle-income countries who deal with health workforce challenges. Cocreation led to relationship building between policy makers and researchers who jointly performed the research and identified solutions through open communication and agile coordination. To shape future health care systems that are responsive both during normal times and during crises, cocreation would be essential for evidence-informed policy development and policy-relevant research.

National multisectoral governance challenges of implementing the Philippines' Reproductive Health Law.

In recognition of the role of reproductive health in individual and national development, the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health (RPRH) Law of 2012 was passed in the Philippines after 30 years of opposition and debate. Seven years later, this article examined the cohesiveness of national multi-sectoral governance among state and non-state actors and identified challenges in coordination as part of the first comprehensive evaluation of the landmark policy. Using a qualitative intrinsic case study design and guided by the World Health Organization's systems checklist for governing health equity as our theoretical perspective, we conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with national implementers from health agencies (n = 11), non-health agencies (n = 6) and non-state actors (n = 3) that included civil society organizations (CSOs). Key themes identified through thematic analysis were supported with document reviews of policy issuances, accomplishment reports and meeting transcripts of the RPRH National Implementation Team (NIT). The study found that despite aspirations for vibrant multi-sectoral coordination, the implementation of the RPRH Law in the Philippines was incohesive. National leaders, particularly the health sector, were neither able to rally non-health sector actors around RPRH nor strategically harness the power of CSOs. Local resource limitations associated with decentralization were exacerbated by paternalistic financing, coordination, and monitoring. The absence of multi-agency plans fostered a culture of siloed opportunism, without consideration to integrated implementation. This case study shows that for neutral policies without conflicts in sector objectives, the interest and buy-in of non-health state actors, even with a national law, cannot be assumed. Moreover, possible conflicts in interests and perspectives between state and civil society actors must be managed in national governance bodies. Overall, there is need for participatory policymaking and health-sector advocacy to set health equity as an intersectoral goal, involving subnational leaders in developing concrete action plans, and strengthening NIT's formal accountability systems.

Cost-utility analysis of heart surgeries for young adults with severe rheumatic mitral valve disease in India.

BACKGROUND: Rheumatic mitral valve disease (RMVD) is a major cause of acquired valvular disease in India. We compared the cost-effectiveness of surgical treatment strategies for young adults with severe RMVD from an Indian public payer perspective. METHODS: We developed a Markov model to reflect the burden of RMVD among a hypothetical cohort of 20-year-olds in India and to estimate quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) and lifetime costs associated with three strategies: (1) Repair; (2) Mechanical valve replacement (MVR-M); and (3) Bioprosthetic valve replacement (MVR-B), compared to a baseline strategy involving a mix of surgeries approximating the standard of care in India (32% Repair, 33% MVR-M, 35% MVR-B). Data on disease burden, intervention effects, and direct medical costs (2018 US$) were obtained from the literature. Deterministic and probabilistic sensitivity analyses were conducted to assess model uncertainty. RESULTS: Repair ($2530, 9.7 QALYs) was less costly and more effective than the standard of care ($2990, 8.7 QALYs) and MVR-M ($3220, 6.2 QALYs). The incremental cost-effective ratio for MVR-B ($3190, 10.1 QALYs) compared to Repair was $1590 per QALY, which may be cost-effective at a threshold of India's per-capita gross domestic product (GDP: $2005). The optimal choice between Repair or MVR-B was sensitive to variations in surgery costs, background mortality, and risks for reoperation. CONCLUSIONS: Our model-based analysis suggests that Repair is the optimal strategy and MVR-M should not be recommended for this subpopulation. MVR-B may be cost-effective in contexts where quality of Repair is not assured, newer generation bioprostheses are used, or the costs of the bioprosthetic valve decrease.

Association of SHI coverage and level of healthcare utilization and costs in the Philippines: a 10-year pooled analysis.

BACKGROUND: The Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth), which manages the Philippine national health insurance program, is a critical actor in the country's strategy for universal health coverage. Over the past decade, PhilHealth has passed significant coverage, benefits and payment reforms to contain costs and improve the affordability care for high-cost diseases, inpatient care and select outpatient services. METHODS: We studied the association of PhilHealth with health care utilization and health care costs using three rounds of the Philippine Demographic and Health Survey with data on individual outpatient and inpatient visits from 2008 to 2017. RESULTS: PhilHealth membership was associated with 42% greater odds of outpatient utilization and 47-100% greater odds inpatient utilization depending on survey year. Depending on facility type, use of PhilHealth to pay for care was associated with higher average health care costs of 244-865% for outpatient care and 135-206% for inpatient care. CONCLUSIONS: PhilHealth has likely decreased barriers to health care utilization but may have inadvertently driven up health care costs in the country. Results align with past studies that suggest that reforms in the prior decade have done little to contain health care costs for Filipinos.