TACLOBAN CITY — Despite the increase in health benefits given to its members, the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) in Eastern Visayas said it has enough funds to cover medical claims amid the surge of dengue cases all over the region.

PhilHealth Eastern Visayas regional vice president Ronald Jabay said that as of 9 August, the PhilHealth office in the region has already processed 4,063 claims for dengue amounting to P44.69 million.

The amount is higher than the P40.3 million claims for dengue in the whole 2023 despite data showing a total of 4,687 claims last year.

“We implemented an across the board increase in the packages, increasing the benefits for dengue patients from P10,000 to P13,000 starting last February,” Jabay explains.

Among the benefit packages that was given the biggest increase is for hemodialysis — covered sessions increased from 144 to 156 sessions per year with the benefit for each session increased from P2,600 to P4,000. The increase in dialysis benefits took effect in July.

“We project that claims for this year to double,” Jabay said.

Records of PhilHealth Eastern Visayas show that the agency paid over P2 billion for dialysis claims in 2023. But from January to 9 August this year, the office already paid over P1.5 billion of dialysis benefits for 199,011 hemodialysis sessions.

He said benefit packages for chronic kidney diseases were increased due to an increasing clamor from members undergoing hemodialysis where the cost of each session also increased due to inflation, among others.

Jabay, however, assured the public that the PhilHealth regional office has enough funds to cover claims for various illnesses.

“We can project the claims of CKD patients because this is constant. We already identified the patients who are undergoing dialysis,” he said.

PhilHealth records show among the top medical cases with the most number of claims in Eastern Visayas include pneumonia, urinary tract infection, acute gastroenteritis, stroke, dengue, peptic ulcer, glomerural and interstitial kidney diseases, malignant hypertension, asthma and essential hypertension.