The Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) announced that they would soon be hiring almost 600 nurses to be deployed in different government hospitals all over country as customer relations staff. The nurses to be hired will be called CARE staff nurses and aims to give better and more personalized services to PhilHealth members.

The hiring is under the PhilHealth CARES (PhilHealth Customer Assistance, Relations and Empowerment Staff) project where nurses will be required to undergo a training that will make them efficient in handling problems related to the availment of PhilHealth benefits. The nurses will also provide assistance to the hospital in processing documentary requirements and therefore will greatly lessen the number of Return-to-Hospital (RTH) claims, which affects the processing time of claims.

Dr. Eduardo P. Banzon, PhilHealth President and CEO said, "We value partnership. The main reason why we are innovating our ways is to be more responsive to the needs of our members and partners. The launch of PhilHealth CARES will definitely improve our front line service, with PhilHealth personnel assisting them at point-of- service which is the hospital. Availment of benefits will be easier and more convenient. They may also assist non-members and encourage them to enroll in the National Health Insurance Program."

The PhilHealth president added that CARE staff nurses will also be tasked to perform data- gathering functions that will be beneficial to researches and studies that might be conducted by PhilHealth in the future. Some of the data gathering includes surveys and exit interviews to PhilHealth members. However, Banzon made it clear that nurses will not do premium collection functions.

According to PhilHealth, about 334 CARE nurses will be deployed and assigned to Levels 3 and 4 government hospitals, while another 196 will be hired to Levels 1 and 2 hospitals.

The hiring is set to start this March, once the recruitment and training processes have been completed. The work assignment will run for six months but may be renewed until end of 2012.

Banzon said, “Under the guidance of Health Secretary Dr. Enrique T. Ona, who also sits as the Chairman of the PhilHealth Board, PhilHealth chose to tap nurses for the project as our way of helping provide jobs for these health professionals. We know that there are many nursing graduates, and even registered nurses for that matter, who are seeking employment and we hope that this project will be of help."

Nurses who want to work under the PhilHealth CARES program can send their resumes to hrmdd.admin@philhealth.gov.ph under the subject heading "PhilHealth CARES application."