A private clinic here has rolled out its mobile health services delivery to poor communities in Eastern Visayas to support the Yaman ng Kalusugan Program (YAKAP) of the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth).

The mobile clinic, with five full-time nurses and partner doctors, has already served over 3,000 patients in Leyte province and other parts of the region with free consultations, laboratory tests, and medicines.

“After the State of the Nation Address (SONA) of President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr., we started deploying our team of nurses and partner doctors to offer an expanded package of accessible health services,” Athena Ramirez, founder and owner of Caring Frontiers, said in a phone interview on Monday.

“This is our share in helping the government to expand the budget utilization for outpatient since a big chunk, or about 87 percent, of the government’s healthcare spending is in hospitals.”

Ramirez said they have been coordinating with local governments and several organizations to conduct mobile consultation and laboratory testing in communities.

“In addition to providing healthcare, we also help people with their PhilHealth membership status so they can easily access services from accredited YAKAP providers,” Ramirez said.

“Anyone can send us a message so we can enroll them, their family members and their friends. Then we will schedule a visit in your community together with our doctors and nurses,” she said.

On July 25 or three days before his fouth SONA, President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. launched YAKAP, which enhanced the existing program to bring healthcare services closer to communities and reduce the need for hospital confinement.

The program introduced a broader range of free primary care services, including free access to 75 essential medicines, laboratory tests and cancer screenings.

YAKAP expanded on PhilHealth’s Konsultasyong Sulit at Tama (Konsulta) program that sought to shift the focus from treatment to prevention. (PNA)