PMA pushes for mandatory membership for all doctors

ORMOC CITY—The Philippine Medical Association (PMA) wants mandatory membership among all doctors renewing their license and for all doctors to upgrade their skills regularly.

PMA president Dr. Oscar D. Tinio said these were the two recommendations the association filed recently with the Philippine Regulation Commission (PRC).

Tinio disclosed these in his recent speech as guest speaker of the 40th anniversary of the Ormoc Medical Society that the PMA has asked the PRC two resolutions affecting the country’s doctors.

Tinio also said the PMA has passed a resolution expressly prohibiting the country’s doctors to refrain from endorsing food supplements and smoking in public.

The first resolution is making PMA membership mandatory in the renewal of a physician’s license. Dr. Tinio lamented there are 110,000 registered physicians in the country, but only 62,591 of them are PMA members.

The second resolution is the revival of the continuing professional education which would require physicians to upgrade their skills regularly.

Dr. Tinio attributes the low membership at PMA to the lack of awareness by many physicians on the benefits they can derive from the organization, chief of which is their accreditation to Philippine Health Insurance Corp., which assures payment for their services.

Furthermore, PMA provides mutual-aid benefits to its members, like disability (P8,000), legal-aid fund (P25,000) and death (P35,000).

Dr. Tinio said the PRC has chosen the PMA as the most outstanding of the 44 professional organizations in the country.

He said there are eight specialty divisions in the medical practice: internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, obstetrics-gynecology, family and community medicine, anesthesiology, radiology and pathology. Dr. Tinio wants the inclusion of more divisions, like public-health medicine, which would require an amendment of the PMA constitution. However, they cannot gather enough support to obtain the required two-thirds vote.

Dr. Tinio added that the PMA passed resolutions prohibiting physicians from endorsing food supplements and from smoking in public. While no penalties are imposed, members of auxiliaries (spouses of PMA members and affiliate organizations) are deputized to document violations of these resolutions. –Felix N. Codilla III / Correspondent, BUsinessmirror