Davao hospital faces backlash over insensitive handling of boy’s death

CAGAYAN DE ORO, Philippines – A Davao City hospital is under fire over its treatment about two weeks ago of the grieving family of a boy who died hours after he was rushed to the medical center because of seizures.

The Metro Pacific Health-owned Davao Doctors Hospital (DDH) announced on Saturday, July 27, that it has started an investigation into the allegations, following a viral social media post by the child’s brother that raised serious questions about its management and priorities.

The 55-year-old DDH is a tertiary level hospital that boasts on its website of being the largest and most modern hospital in Southern Philippines.

On Facebook, Jade Mark Capiñanes said his five-year-old brother had cardiopulmonary arrest in the DDH on July 17, and that physicians there suspected that it was a case of encephalitis.

Despite the doctors’ efforts to control the seizures with intravenous medication, the boy passed away that afternoon. 

He said the way the staff dealt with them reflected poorly on the hospital’s management and priorities.

“We are grieving – but they failed to see it,” said the boy’s brother.

Capiñanes’ post ignited a wave of public outrage, with many calling for an investigation into the hospital’s practices, alleged insensitivity, and accountability for the staff involved. 

Capiñanes criticized the hospital staff for lack of transparency regarding intensive care unit  admissions. 

He said when the child’s seizures became uncontrollable, doctors recommended transferring him to the ICU. However, he said, the hospital staff focused primarily on the cost of the ICU, estimated at P50,000 to P80,000 per day, without disclosing room availability. 

“If my brother needed the ICU, why were we having a conversation that always circled back to the cost?” Capiñanes said.

After a stressful discussion, Capiñanes said they were informed there were no vacant ICU rooms, making the family feel that its availability depended on their ability to pay rather than medical urgency.

Capiñanes also recounted that after his brother’s death, the initial bill of about P79,000 included charges for procedures not done, like an MRI and an x-ray. 

After requesting an itemized invoice and checking it, he said, the bill was reduced to about P56,000, showing an overcharge of around P23,000.

He said if one of his brothers didn’t ask for details, “we would have been overcharged by around P23,000. That’s a lot of money, which we needed. But based on how they handled the billing, who knows what else was there that needed reviewing and removing?” he said.

He alleged that the hospital left the child’s body overnight in the morgue unattended and even tried to charge for it. 

“We couldn’t transfer our little brother’s body to the funeral home that day. The funeral home required a medical certificate, which the hospital said they could only provide the next morning. The next day I went back to the hospital to claim it. The first thing they told me was about money: ‘Sir, you need to pay additional fees for the preservation of your brother’s body because you didn’t retrieve it yesterday,” he said.

Capiñanes said he just wanted to bring his brother’s remains out of the hospital and agreed to pay only to learn later that the body was left unattended and hadn’t been preserved.

“Basically they were about to charge us for a service they didn’t provide,” he said. “Although my brother was dead, the fact remained that he had once been a human being, a little kid at that. A little humanity would have been nice. But all they were concerned about was money, money, money.”

Capiñanes expressed his frustration with the hospital’s apparent prioritization of profit over compassion and proper care. 

He said the hospital management’s handling of the situation during their time of grief was very disappointing.

Responding to the viral post, DDH stated, “We are aware of the concerns that have been shared on social media, and we want to assure the public that we are taking these concerns seriously.”

The hospital said it shared in the family’s grief and was in touch with them, adding that “the situation is being urgently and thoroughly investigated.”

“We will communicate our findings to the family privately,” read part of the DDH statement. – Rappler.com