Lawmakers have raised alarm over the steep decline in the utilization rate of the OFW Hospital in Pampanga, which plunged to just 14 percent this year from 35 percent in 2023 and 43 percent in 2024, based on records from the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW).
During the Senate Committee on Finance hearing on the DMW’s 2026 budget, Senator Win Gatchalian cited the figures, saying the hospital’s underuse should be urgently addressed.
DMW Secretary Hans Cacdac attributed the problem mainly to procurement delays and centralized systems. “You are right, you hit the capital outlay expenditures, more particularly in the construction of additional facilities, equipment, and medicines. We have been resolving the matter over the last few months and seek to address the problem of utilization,” he said.
Cacdac noted that the agency has been working with PhilPharma to ensure a steady flow of medicines instead of relying on back procurement. “The procurement is still centered on the DMW. We want to download this already at the regional OFW Hospital level. We are currently engaged in terms of a steadier stream of procurement,” he explained.
DMW Undersecretary Dominique Rubia-Tutay said the department has started decentralizing its financial management and Bids and Awards Committee functions to help improve operations. “In the past, all of our activities in the central office were centralized. There’s no personnel in the OFW Hospital handling the financial side of operating the hospital,” she said.
Tutay added that most of the unspent funds were meant for hospital equipment and that the ₱80-million Cancer Care Center, funded in 2024, is finally set to begin construction this month after delays caused by budget placement and failed biddings. “There have been delays in the past; first, there was a failed bidding, and the second time around, only a single bidder won,” she noted.
Cacdac confirmed that the same contractor who built the OFW Hospital will handle the Cancer Care Facility. Despite the low turnout, he defended the hospital’s importance as the country’s first dedicated facility for overseas Filipino workers, serving nearly 100,000 OFWs from Luzon each year.
He also thanked Senator Raffy Tulfo for helping promote the hospital through information drives and assured lawmakers that the promised Cancer Care Center would be completed within President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s term.
The OFW Hospital, inaugurated in 2022 and managed by the DMW in partnership with the Department of Health and the University of the Philippines–Philippine General Hospital, currently operates as a Level 1 facility. Cacdac said efforts are underway to upgrade it to Level 2 by next year with the addition of an intensive care unit (ICU) and an MRI unit.
The hospital recorded ₱73.4 million in income in 2025, up from ₱52.8 million in 2024, which can now be retained for its operations under the 2025 national budget.
