That familiar site of patients lying along hospital hallways for sheer lack of rooms may soon be a thing of the past, with the addition of another hospital in Dumaguete City.
The Allied Care Experts (ACE) Dumaguete Doctors Inc. broke ground last weekend for a six-storey hospital in barangay Daro that is expected to be operational by 2017.
Dr. Jonathan Amante, president of ACE Dumaguete Doctors, said the 100-bed ACE Medical Center will help fill the gap of providing medical services for the Province’s population of 1.3 million people, not counting those who cross the channel from Siquijor, southern Cebu, Bohol, or northern Mindanao to come to Dumaguete to get medical care.
“Ideally, a place must have at least one tertiary hospital for every 1,000 persons,” Amante, a nephrologist, said.
With Negros Oriental’s population, the Province needs about 1,300 beds.
Currently, hospitals in Dumaguete only have a total of 500 beds: Negros Oriental Provincial Hospital has 250, Silliman Medical Center has 150, and the Holy Child Hospital has 100.
A new hospital undergoing construction in Sibulan, the Negros Polymedic Hospital, will have 150 beds.
Amante noted how patients admitted in the hospitals normally have to contend with staying in the hallways for the first three days, before being upgraded to the rooms. “It’s a common sight here because our hospitals are very congested.”
He said that with the entry of ACE Medical, the Province would even continue to be short of 550 hospital beds.
Dr. Amante said the influx of patients who need medical care can be matched with the influx of medical doctors. “The quality of medical education provided at the Silliman Medical School is another good indicator on the sustainability of operating a new hospital here in the Province,” said Amante, who is also dean of the Silliman University Medical School.
The Silliman Medical School produces about 50 doctors each year for the last five years — all of whom pass the professional board exams. “That’s about 200 to 250 new medical doctors in the last five years, half of whom stay with us in the Province,” Amante noted.
ACE Medical Center boasts of the P60-million MRI machine, which is critical in radiology for the diagnosis of diseases like cancer.
The only MRI machine in the Province, at the NOPH, has been due for repairs for the past years.
Dr. Amante said there will also be a CT scan, a physical rehabilitation facility, and 18 dialysis stations.
Currently, there are only 28 dialysis machines in the Province: 10 machines at the Dumaguete Medical Laboratory, and six machines each at Holy Child Hospital, Silliman Medical, and at the Provincial Hospital.
Aside from the other standard facilities of Level 2 Hospitals, ACE Medical Center will also have four operating/delivery rooms in the obstetrics-gynecology complex; five operating theaters in the operating room complex; 50 doctors’ clinics; and a dining area in the top floor with a panoramic view. On the drawing board is a medical nuclear laboratory.
Amante cited cost of medical care as another edge of ACE Medical over other hospitals in the City. “We would naturally be less expensive because of the procurement system of medicines and equipment by ACE, being a group of hospitals in the Luzon and Visayas regions.” Dr. Amante also noted how networks of hospitals are currently mushrooming in Cebu, bringing the cost of medical care down.
He said this vision for a new hospital actually began in 1988 when he returned to Dumaguete from training in Manila. “This is the product of a dream in the last 27 years.”
Through the specialization programs Amante instituted at the SU Medical Center and at the Holy Child Hospital, they trained Internal Medicine specialists out of the local doctors practicing in Dumaguete then. “My feeling then, as it is now, is that we should produce our own medical specialists,” he said. “That was when I thought that the Province was ripe for a local medical school.”
By 1997, he proposed the idea of a med school to Silliman, but no one thought it was a sustainable concept until 2005 when a battery of medical experts from Negros Oriental assured the University of quality education. “Seventy percent of the faculty-MDs now teaching at the Silliman Medical School are actually graduates of the specialization programs I started in the hospitals,” Amante said.
Amante said ACE Medical Center is the first hospital in the Province that is literally involving the public by opening its ownership to shareholders.
Stocks are being offered for P250,000 per share.
Amante said it takes about P1 billion to put up and fully operate a fully-equipped hospital.
The set-up is the same for medical facilities under the ACE Group of Hospitals in Valenzuela City, in Bulacan; Pateros in Manila, Project 8 in Quezon City, and in Tagbilaran City.
ACE is also building hospitals in Cebu City, Iloilo City, and Tacloban City.
Other medical practitioners who head ACE Dumaguete include Dr. Rolando Regalado as vice president/Board director, Dr. Aejeleth Eyas as secretary, Dr. Diamond Arco as treasurer. Board directors include Dr. Idelle Marie Ada-Yurong, Dr. Robert Tan, Dr. Silahis Oliver-Rosario, and Dr. Brenda Diputado.
“The support we have gotten so far from the community is very positive; we’re very contented,” Amante said, stressing the importance of retaining the credibility of their team.
He said ACE Doctors has the support of over 50 percent of all doctors and hospital practitioners in the Province.
They are currently studying the credentials of doctors who would like to invest in ACE Medical Center to be able to practice and hold clinics there.
