Premier Hospital, Where It Counts

Sheltered by greenery away from the maddening crowd and choking pollution, DLSU Medical Center offers top-of-the-line health care to non-urban residents

By Michelle Ciriacruz

While patients wait desperately for a bed outside intensive care units (ICUs) in Metro Manila hospitals, here, bedside cardiac monitors remain silent most of the time.

    While patients queue for their turn in the handful of state-of-the-art medical machines in the cities, here, patients hardly ever have to.

    While the smog of airborne pollution together with the air of harassment borne of an overcrowding of patients plague tertiary hospitals in the metropolis, here, the scent of forest hangs in the air, and doctors, nurses, and other medical staff are free to give a hundred percent of their care, expertise, and concern to each patient.

    Within hailing distance of cities whose population try to fit itself in crowded state or charity medical centers and private ones that relatively few can afford to go to, this hospital sees just a fraction of what city hospitals experience everyday, but, actually, it has the capacity for just as much.

    Sheltered by its greenery, the relative obscurity of De La Salle University (DLSU) Medical Center in the heart of Dasmariñas, Cavite may be both its boon and its bane.

    It may be the first hospital granted the ISO (International Standards Organization) 9001 certificate by TUV Rheinland, ISO certifying body based in Germany, and to pass the International Standard for Quality Management System in the country, but until now, it struggles to be noticed by those who could be benefiting from its top quality health care services and facilities.

A Dose of Foresight

    DLSU Medical Center is housed within the DLSU-Health Sciences Campus, an eight-hectare lot on which the six buildings of the hospital and the four colleges (medicine, nursing and midwifery, medical radiation technology, and physical therapy) are clustered. The actual hospital is composed of two four-story buildings and a ten-story one. But separating the hospital from the school might just be an exercise in futility, as the medical center and the academic building interconnect not just in physical space but in the trails the campus residents blaze upon education, health care, research, and community service.

    The research output, whether academic or hospital-based, is funneled through the medical research center. Besides handling 40 to 50 papers a year from its own people, the center is actively involved in collaborative studies with other medical institutions.

    Staffed by the best in the fields, DLSU Medical Center is the home of such prominent names as Philippine Coalition against Tuberculosis president Dr. Charles Yu, noted immunologist Dr. Jovilla Abong, Association of Philippine Medical Colleges trustee Dr. Romeo Ariniego, Philippine Association of Training Officers in Surgery president Dr. Jose Cueto Jr., and Philippine Society of Anatomists past president Dr. Betty Engracia.

    Although to date, it has around 170 specialists and subspecialists, 460 hospital staff, and 120 medical residents supported by interns and clerks, the center is calling for more subspecialists to join its ranks.

    According to the director of corporate sales and marketing department Dr. Armando Sayao, the hospital already has the complete complement of subspecialists in pediatrics serving the hospital's patients, but still needs to beef up its roster of pulmonary specialists, cardiologists, and gastroenterologists.

    Dr. Sayao explains that although huge investments were poured into making sure the hospital's facilities are as technologically up-to-date as possible, they were made more on the basis of future need than present demand. "We don't see the demand right now, but we prepare for it," he says.

    However, he and the rest of the hospital's crew hope that DLSU Medical Center does get more publicity soon. Built on a dose of foresight, when the medical college and university medical center were established outside the capital back in 1979 to make them more accessible to southern Tagalog folks, the hospital's mission/vision of continuously improving health delivery services through research and the use of advanced technology is being hampered by lack of public knowledge on the full range of its capability.

    Dr. Sayao reveals the hospital already has the resources-including professional expertise-for very advanced medical procedures, such as pacemaker insertion and arthroscopy. Its operating room complex, equipped with lapchole machine, operative microscope, fetal monitor, osteon hall bone drill, coloscope, fiberoptic video broncoendoscope, can handle anything from reconstructive and cardiovascular /thoracic surgery to cancer and neurosurgery.

    Services in the other hospital departments are just as advanced. In radiology, a CT scan, mammography, three ultrasound machines with color Doppler, and six X-ray machines (three are with fluoroscopy and tomography while three are portable) make for a strong line-up of diagnostic tools. The cardiovascular laboratory contains an ECG (electrocardiogram) unit, a Holter monitor, stress test machines, and a 2-D echo.

    Pulmonary services are also prioritized, facilitated by such machines as arterial blood gas analyzer, respirators for both adult and pediatric patients, peak expiratory flow rate (PEFR) meter, and ultrasonic nebulizer (USN).

    In addition, the clinical laboratory has a blood bank equipped with a refrigerated centrifuge and plasma freezer. It can provide automated hematology, chemistry and EIA analysis for hepatitis, tumor marking, and a thyroid function test. The laboratory also uses a Bactec (automated culturing instrument).

    The hospital also does electroencephalogram (EEG), electromyography (EMG), and hemodialysis with eight Baxter machines.

    Meanwhile, the DLSU Medical Center's ICU is up there with Metro Manila's leading hospitals, in terms of high-tech care. It boasts of a central monitor for all beds, bedside cardiac monitors, and physiocontrol machines (piped-in oxygen). In addition, DLSU Medical Center has the biggest neonatal ICU (12 beds) in the entire Calabarzon area.

    DLSU Medical Center even distinguishes itself on being one of the few hospitals in the country to offer a center for indigenous and traditional medicine. Headed by Dr. Josephine Alayon, it provides health care through herbal medicine and acupuncture.

    With all of this, however, the potential invested into the hospital's founding remains to a large degree unexplored. Its excellence in service has already been confirmed by the International Organization for Standardization and yet the hospital's supposed beneficiaries in the Southern Tagalog region seem largely unaware of a premier hospital right in their midst.

    This is best illustrated by what is happening with the Cancer Institute, equipped with a Cobalt machine and which follows the CIS BioInternational Radiotherapy system. Dr. Saiyas regrets: "It was built in 1998, but up to now, we are not getting many patients there."

    Despite the lack of patients, the hospital's doctors do not miss out on training in cancer treatment. Dr. Saiyas reveals such is extended to them by the hospital through sponsorship in other cancer centers to prevent their skills and knowledge from getting rusty.

    Not that the hospital is kept idle. It busies itself with community outreach programs. Essentially, it is one of the hospital's strengths. "We are very active with our community work. We adopt certain communities in the area, and then we take care of that community-from promotive health, preventive, to curative. We immerse our doctors in the community, they eat there...sleep...live there," Dr. Saiyas explains.

    This attention to social service is basic to the DLSU system. Since ownership of the College of Medicine and University Medical Center was delivered to DLSU back in 1987, the hospital has run on the Lasallian values of Religio, Mores, Cultura, Christian ideals that stress just dealings with other persons.

    Out of the 250 beds, 50 are reserved for service patients who benefit from free medical and nursing services, free meals, 50-percent discount on accommodation, radiology, laboratory and operating room expenses, and medicines, commodities and supplies at cost.

    DLSU Medical Center has also come up with a credit agreement accreditation program, intending to attract the business establishments that now proliferate in the region. Dr. Saiyas relates: "Because the hospital is situated in the Calabarzon industrial zone, we realized that there are so many industrial companies in the area we do not cater to."

    With this credit arrangement, a company's employees can avail themselves of a range of hospitalization benefits, including at least 15 days credit line, no cash outlay upon discharge, annual physical examination, executive check-up, and for emergency treatment and consultation, patients need only present their company ID for the hospital to charge the employee's account to the company.

A Dash of Faith

    Everything seems to be in place at DLSU Medical Center. The staff, from the medical to the nonmedical, works according to a system that prioritizes efficiency and patient care. Yes, it is regrettable that the applications of this system are not yet being fully realized. However, the growing health needs springing from the increasing urbanization of the Southern Tagalog region promise a livelier turn of events. It is just a matter of time before the pace picks up.

    For now, the lush and serene environment of the countryside could only inspire-learning for those who seek it, and faster healing and recovery for those who need it. This countryside shelters many things but mediocrity is not among them.

    Due to its agricultural setting, DLSU Medical Center may not be a hit compared with other hospitals in the metropolis. Nevertheless, what it lacks in mass appeal, it more than makes up for in critical acclaim. Patients could expect only the quality holistic health care nurtured by the Catholic values and traditions of the DLSU system.

Photos By Boaner Medina