Senators during the Senate Committee on Finance hearing on the budget of the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) raised concerns over the declining utilization rate of the OFW Hospital in Pampanga, which fell to 14 percent in 2025.

Senator Win Gatchalian cited DMW records showing the hospital’s utilization stood at 35 percent in 2023, 43 percent in 2024, and dropped to 14 percent this year.

Migrant Workers Secretary Hans Cacdac pointed to procurement delays and centralized systems as major causes.

“Here in the OFW Hospital, you are right, you hit the capital outlay expenditures, more particularly in the construction of additional facilities, equipment, and medicines. We have been resolving the matter over the last few months and seek to address the problem of utilization,” Cacdac said.

He also cited some partnerships to address problems of utilization, such as DMW’s partnership with PhilPharma, which can provide a steady stream of medicine instead of the traditional back procurement from DMW’s side, which they are also trying to address.

“The procurement is still centered on the DMW. We want to download this already at the regional OFW Hospital level. We are currently engaged in terms of a steadier stream of procurement. If I were to hit the problem, it's essentially procurement,” Cacdac added.

DMW Undersecretary Dominique Rubia-Tutay also added that the department is now decentralizing its financial management and Bids and Awards Committee functions.

“In the past, all of our activities in the central office were centralized. There’s no personnel in the OFW Hospital handling the financial side of operating the hospital,” she said. “We have put in place systems and developed their capacity for managing finance.”

Tutay explained that most of the unutilized funds were allotted for capital outlay, primarily for hospital equipment. She also addressed the delay in the construction of the ₱80-million Cancer Care Center, which was funded in 2024, saying that the DMW has already coordinated with the contractor, who will begin setting up the facility within the month.

According to Tutay, the delay came from budget placement and bidding issues, as the funds were coursed through the Department of Health (DOH) and implemented by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).

“I think the budget was lodged with the DPWH,” Tutay said. “There have been delays in the past; first, there was a failed bidding, and the second time around, only a single bidder won.”

Cacdac said that the contractor who will build the Cancer Care Facility was also the contractor who established the OFW Hospital.

Despite the low utilization rate, Cacdac defended the hospital’s role as the country’s first facility for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), with nearly 100,000 Luzon OFWs catered to annually.

Chairman of the Senate Committee on Migrant Workers Raffy Tulfo has also been helping the DMW in intensifying information campaigns to boost patient turnout, the DMW chief said.

“We will still fulfill our promise to the President that the Cancer Care Center will be established within his term,” Cacdac said.

The OFW Hospital was inaugurated in 2022, run by the DMW with support from the DOH and the University of the Philippines - Philippine General Hospital, which offers free medical services to OFWs and their dependents.

The hospital is currently classified as a Level 1 health facility. According to the DMW chief, it does not yet have an intensive care unit (ICU), although provisions for one are already in place, as well as for a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) unit.

“We are on the way to achieving a level 2 status, hopefully by next year to operate the ICU.”

As of 2025, the hospital reported ₱73.4 million in income, up from ₱52.8 million in 2024, which can now be retained for hospital operations under the 2025 national budget.