THE Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) is set to introduce a biometrics system in all its offices and participating health facilities next year, as parts of effort to minimize, if not eliminate, fraudulent activities.
“PhilHealth saw the need to institute biometric checks at the level of health facilities to ensure the integrity of hospital claims,” said the agency’s president, Ricardo Morales.
The biometrics system includes a “liveness check” that will help PhilHealth validate if a member or a dependent is still alive or has expired during confinement, while “identity authentication” will help PhilHealth verify if a claimant is who he or she claims to be.
“The liveness check and identity authentication technologies will help ensure that only those claims of living members or patients are paid by PhilHealth,” said Morales.
He said the smartphone-based app biometric system features a fingerprint scanning system. It also has a facial recognition feature.
Earlier this year, PhilHealth was rocked by controversy following the discovery of claims made by the Quezon City-based WellMed Dialysis Center using names of deceased dialysis patients. — Gerard Naval
