The Makati City government has expanded its health services with the inclusion of a special program for patients with serious and chronic illness, and also provide psychosocial and spiritual support to their family members.
“We want to ease the suffering of residents with life-threatening and chronic diseases. Knowing how prolonged illness can take a toll on the well-being of family members, too, we have given priority to establishing palliative and hospice care as part of the city’s expanded health services,” said Mayor Abigail Binay.
Binay announced the recent launch of the first phase of the Palliative and Hospice Care Program at the Ospital ng Makati which was spearheaded by the Department of Family and Community Medicine.
“Through the PHCP, we will provide a support system for both the patients and their family to help them cope with multiple burdens they are carrying. We hope to make them feel they are not alone in facing a most difficult time in their lives,” Binay said.
The city chief executive expressed confidence in DFCM’s ability to effectively implement the program, being an accredited training program of the Philippine Academy of Family Physicians.
She assured the PHCP team that the city government would continue to support them through palliative and end-of-life-care education and training in the form of seminars, workshops, home visit kits, and sensitizing sessions, among others. Joel Zurbano
Binay also announced that the city government would soon pilot another feature of the program, Home Hospice, in Barangay Southside, DFCM’s adopted barangay.
“Home Hospice will cater to the needs of terminally ill residents who are no longer responding to treatment. Its focus will be on providing comfort care and pain management for the patient, and counselling and moral support for the family until bereavement,” she said.
Recently, the PHCP Outpatient Clinic started operations at the Ambulatory Medicine Complex of OsMak.
It is open every Monday and Friday to cater to Makatizens needing palliative and hospice care.
The PHCP performs its in-patient services when it receives referrals from other departments for services needed by patients confined at the hospital, such as pain and symptom control, counselling and psychosocial support, transition care from hospital to home, and end-of-life care.
OsMak medical director Dr. Vergel Binay said the PHCP was multidisciplinary.
Holistic care is delivered by medical, nursing and allied health care providers, including social workers in a collaborative fashion.
The goals of care are always aligned even if each team member has a different role, he explained.
All members of the multidisciplinary team are required to write their assessments and treatment plans in the charts of the patients, write entries for every in-patient visit, and also contribute to the overall discharge instructions.