Friday, February 8, 2013

on preppin' for a funeral ...

Yesterday, I had to rush to Makati Medical Hospital because the father of one of the person's dearest to me suddenly passed away. It was very sudden and therefore unforeseen.

When I first saw A, he looked like he was in a state of shock. It was understandable. I told him and his sister to go home and tell their mother about what happened. I told him that I would be the one to process the papers and billing.

It was the start of a long and tiring process.

Apparently, for all the talks of caring for their patients and the people who go to their hospital, Makati Med failed to foresee what happens when a patient dies. Either that or they don't care.

Yesterday, I was sent to Admissions, Laboratory, Billing, and Patient Relations. Since it was a first time for me to actually process papers concerning the death of a relative, I was lost. I asked people around but it seems that aside from the following information, no one really tells you what happens. I tell you, I went around and around because I kept getting sent to different offices.
  • pay the bill 
  • call a funeral service to get the body within 24 hours because apparently if the body stays for more than 24 hours, it goes to a freezer 
With what happened to me and all the hardship that I went through just to secure billing, a cause of death, and the death certificate, I came to realize that a lot needs to be improved with how the hospital handles situations when a patient dies. I hope that this would be of help to others who might find themselves in a similar situation in the future.

Some few things to remember.
  1. 24 hours start when the patient is declared dead. Yes, they don't care that the first few hours would probably be a shock to you and you won't be able to think of a lot of things. 
  2. You need to ensure that a funeral homes will be notified because they will not release the body unless it is the funeral homes that will be taking it from the morgue. 
  3. The bill needs to be paid in full before they will release the body. 
  4. Someone needs to sign the death certificate. Scary thing is, they didn't even ask for my ID when I told them I would just be the one to sign it. 
Now, additional things to remember if the one who died is a senior citizen.
  1. You are entitled to a 20% discount on the bill. 
  2. The nearest living relative of the person who passed away gets Php2000 from the local government unit. 
  3. You are entitled to bereavement benefits from SSS. 
 I hope that in some way this was able to help you and add knowledge. I also hope that hospitals would just do a small checklist for people so that they would know what the next steps are when there is a death in the family.

5 comments:

  1. this is really informative at ang sad lang tlga noh...sa trato nila with this case..condolence.

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  2. First off, my sincerest condolences to you and your friend. I guess Medical City is more efficient than MMC then. I don't remember such hassles when my dad passed away there.

    Oh, and I didn't know about the P2k benefit from the government. What LGU is this?

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  3. All LGU's. It is a benefit if the one who passed away is a senior citizen.

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  4. i know the same feeling of the agony, the efforts you have to make and the pain on dealing it afterwards. It's devastating and really heartbreaking.

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  5. condolences to you and your frend also. I haven't been in the same situation before. My grandfather passed away before but i am outside of philippines. Though I am sure its gonna be hard. At least I got some pointers from here as you stated above. x0x0

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Hi! Let's all try to add more positivity in this world and adhere to the saying, "if you don't have anything nice to say, keep silent."

Showering you with unicorn poop so you'd always stay magical! Heart heart!