UHC coordinating council to ensure transparency and accountability on special health fund spending – DOH – Presidential Communications Office

The Universal Health Care (UHC) Coordinating Council will keep track of the spending of the special health fund by the local government units (LGUs) and local health systems in a bid to improve the country’s health system, Health Secretary Teodoro Herbosa said Tuesday.

“And what happens is there is going to be a special health fund which is actually emphasized in the law and that’s why we created the council to watch the spending of the money on the special health fund and the implementation would be standard for all different LGUs,” Herbosa said in a press briefing in Malacañang.

Under Republic Act No. 11223 or the UHC Act, the province-wide or city-wide health system shall pool and manage, through a special health fund, all resources intended for health services to finance population-based and individual-based health services, health system operating costs, capital investments, and remuneration of additional health workers and incentives for all health workers.

“The problem we’re trying to solve is the fragmentation of the health system – we solved this during COVID. Because of the Local Government Code, local health systems were given to municipal mayors and governors – so, when the UHC Act was implemented the aim was to integrate health systems. So, you’ll come up with the provincial health board run by the governor and then it would consolidate all the health systems in the different mayors in his province – so, this is how the integration will happen,” Herbosa said.

“So, the President knows that there are diverse implementations that our LGUs, that our good implementers of healthcare systems locally and there are those that have don’t put emphasis there – so, they like to put a national standard and that’s where the council would be able to police or monitor how LGUs and local health systems will be spending funds or income from PhilHealth, income from the other local government units and how the health system can be improved because our health systems are diverse – some are very good, some are very weak so, depending on what their levels are – that’s how the spending will come,” he said.

Asked if the coordinating council is another layer of red tape,