Maxicare modernizing, taps new technologies

Local firm Maxicare Healthcare Corp. is seeking to modernize the country’s healthcare industry by tapping new technologies that will make it easier for claimants to get affordable medical attention when they need it.

In a recent briefing, the company said it had introduced new features that made healthcare services more accessible to its 600,000 clients, and HMO [health maintenance organization] services cheaper for employers and other users.

By 2013, the company said it planned to raise its client base to one million, taking advantage of the country’s growing economy and the boom in certain industries, particularly the business process outsourcing sector.

“The healthcare situation now in the Philippines shows that there are a lot of opportunities for companies like us,” Maxicare president Jose Pastor Puno told reporters.

Of the country’s 93 million people, about 65 million are covered by the state-run PhilHealth program. “But the coverage of PhilHealth is very limited. Many of our own members are also PhilHealth members,” Puno said.

He said private HMO companies today covered only about three million Filipinos. “Most of these are working class people employed by big corporations,” he said. This means there is still a large, untapped market of employees that don’t have health coverage, he added.

Puno said the company also wanted to tap small and medium enterprises in the country that were just starting to provide healthcare benefits to their employees.

To make its services more attractive to new clients, Maxicare said it continued to expand its network by signing new partnership with doctors and other healthcare professionals in the country.—Paolo G. Montecillo