BY MATÈ ESPINA
BACOLOD City’s Mayor Bing Leonardia recently issued an executive order (EO) allowing hospital-supervised home isolation for asymptomatic, mild, or moderate cases of COVID-19.
In his EO released last Thursday, Mayor Bing said “Hospital-supervised home isolation for patients will help decongest hospital beds and ensure professional medical care and generate income opportunities for medical professionals.”
Of course, this new order is a win-win solution for those who can only afford private care. Besides, with over a thousand active cases in the city and the mandatory pull-out of positive patients in their domicile as required by the Emergency Operations Center (EOC), the city will not anymore have to bother with those who have extra resources to seek their own care.
I wonder though how Gen. Mel Feliciano who earlier set-up the no-home quarantine ruling of the EOC will feel about this.
This EO of course will also affect the revenue of hotels and inns that have been converted into quarantine facilities for self-pay positive patients because if given the choice now, I bet those who can afford private medical care and can show proof that they have isolation areas in their homes, would welcome this new order.
Based on the EO, medical institutions will have to be accredited by the EOC and will have to submit their own process for providing medical care to home-based patients which must include daily patient monitoring of medical personnel, their medications, and either physical or web-based consultations. On top of that, the hospital is also required to ensure there is immediate bed availability for the patient in case of disease progression, including patient transport.
I am seeing huge revenue for private hospitals and for doctors as well and I hope they can manage it well, otherwise they may face liability from the rich if something goes wrong in the process.
This does not answer as well the premise of Gen. Feliciano before to pull-out positive patients from their homes to stop the spread of the virus within a family. I would understand home quarantine for entire families who are infected because there is no point in transferring all of them to another facility. But if only one out of five is infected, the containment is not addressed and woe if it spreads to the rest of the family.
I am for this personally because I’d like that option given as convalescing at home is good for the psyche for as long as it is properly managed, than be placed in a public quarantine facility or even in a hotel where you are alone for 14 days from the time you are pulled out of your home.
A friend of mine who is a mother to a special child was sent to a hotel even if they have areas in their home for self-isolation and was in fact doing that at the onset of symptoms and before her results came back.
She had her own medical conditions and a cancer survivor at that. She has claustrophobia as well and had to be transferred to another room with a balcony and had to be administered with a sedative and monitored daily by a health personnel. Hotel stay was at her own expense but added medical care was at the city’s expense. Under this new order, the city can wash their hands off these type of patients.
I did understand where Gen. Mel was coming from when he set-up the mandatory quarantine in accredited public and private facilities then. It was also non-discriminatory in a sense because rich and poor alike have no choice but to vacate their homes. It was in the choice of the facility where the divide was evident.
But there was a downside to that as well as in the case of another friend who was symptomatic but did not get himself tested for fear of being hauled out of his home. He was lucky to have survived it unscathed but this is just one case that shows our government does not have the accurate picture of the spread in our community
If the hospitals can justify the cost of P1,500-P2,000 per day for home-based patients, I am sure many will take this option as hotel quarantine will also cost you about P1,300-P1,500 per day. The nice thing about this is that in case of disease progression exactly, the hospital can immediately transfer you to their facility without waiting it out in the triage area for your confirmatory test for the virus.
The bigger winner in this is the city government. Not only will they save on expenses and manpower for patient transport and additional care, they have satisfied the wishes of the high and mighty.
In short, they have one sector out of their hair./PN
