Negros Oriental Governor Manuel Sagarbarria yesterday assured to hire more doctors and nurses for the Negros Oriental Provincial Hospital (NOPH) after the Department of Health (DOH) in Central Visayas (DOH-7) designated it as a Level 2 facility.

“The student doctors are already inquiring about possible jobs now that the NOPH is a Level 2 hospital and once they come in, we can do better service,” Sagarbarria said during a press conference at the capitol.

Sagarbarria noted that the NOPH is understaffed, especially lacking in the number of required physicians.

“I learned that sometimes it takes one whole day before a patient can be attended to at the provincial hospital,” he said.

The governor explained that student doctors are technically graduates but still need certifications that they have served at the hospital as doctors.

Dr. Marc Angelo Llosa, NOPH chief of hospital, said NOPH currently has 80 doctors, with a few of them practicing in specialized fields.

Llosa said 80 more doctors are needed with the upgrading of NOPH to Level 2, but he did not mention the requirements for nurses.

During the activity designating NOPH as a Level 2 facility, DOH-7 Director Jaime Bernadas handed over the license to operate to the governor.

Bernadas explained that a Level 2 designation means that the NOPH is now qualified as a general hospital operating on “departmentalized services.”

“The four major departments are internal medicine, general surgery, general pediatrics, and obstetrics and gynecology. These are the DOH requirements for the NOPH to become Level 2 and must also have a functional Level 2 laboratory,” he said.

Currently, the only Level 3 hospital in Negros Oriental is the Silliman University Medical Center, or for a still higher level of care, a patient can be referred to the Vicente Sotto Memorial Hospital in Cebu City, the health official added. (PNA)