Filed
First Reading
Second Reading — Committee
Second Reading — Plenary
Third Reading
Approved
EnactedNow
Bangsamoro Autonomy Act No. 27
In forceAn Act Establishing a Level Ii District Hospital with One Hundred (100) Bed Capacity in the Municipality of Maimbung, Province of Sulu, and Appropriating Funds Therefor
A hospital that did not exist is established in law, with 100 beds at Level II. Its chief must submit an annual operational plan, and any future expansion must follow an annual hospital development plan.
Filed
First Reading
Second Reading — Committee
Second Reading — Plenary
Third Reading
Approved
EnactedNow
Signed into law and operative unless later amended or repealed.
What this measure does
This creates a hospital where there was none: a Level II district hospital with a hundred beds in the municipality of Maimbung, Sulu.
It is run differently from the region's other new hospitals. Rather than reporting to the regional Ministry of Health, it sits under the direct administrative and technical supervision of the Integrated Provincial Health Office of Sulu. The regional ministry's role is narrower — its Regulation and Licensing Enforcement Division must bring the operational guidelines for a hundred-bed Level II facility into the ministry's program, and it receives an annual operational plan from the hospital chief setting out programs, projects, activities and budgetary needs.
Growth is put on a planning footing too: any future increase in beds or upgrade of services has to rest on an annual hospital development plan prepared with IPHO-Sulu. Salaries and running costs go into the Bangsamoro's annual appropriations act.
Why it was proposed
To put Level II services inside Maimbung rather than at the end of a journey, and to do it through Sulu's existing provincial health structure.
Who it affects
- Residents of Maimbung and the surrounding municipalities of Sulu.
- Patients who would otherwise travel for services a Level II hospital provides.
- The Integrated Provincial Health Office – Sulu, which takes on supervision of a new hundred-bed facility.
- MOH-BARMM, which sets guidelines and receives annual plans.
Who would implement it
- Integrated Provincial Health Office – Sulu, with direct administrative and technical supervision
- Ministry of Health – BARMM, through the Regulation and Licensing Enforcement Division
- The Chief of Maimbung District Hospital, who submits the annual operational plan
Funding
Carries an appropriation. No amount is stated. Personnel Services and Maintenance and Other Operating Expenses are to be included in the annual General Appropriations Act of the Bangsamoro. The act funds the running of the hospital and is silent on the capital cost of building it.
What changes if it becomes law
- A Level II hospital with 100 beds exists in law in Maimbung.
- Supervision runs through the provincial health office rather than the regional ministry.
- The hospital must produce an annual operational plan and, for any expansion, a hospital development plan.
- Level II operational guidelines enter the regional ministry's program.
Raised during deliberations
No published record of the debate on this measure. Parliament’s journals cover sittings up to March 2023 only, and no committee report on it has been published.
What to notice
The supervision arrangement is what distinguishes this from the rest of the June 2022 cluster. Datu Blah Sinsuat and Wao were placed under the regional Ministry of Health; Maimbung is placed under Sulu's own provincial health office, with the ministry keeping only the licensing standard and the annual plan. That is a meaningfully different model of health governance — provincial delivery with regional standard-setting — enacted without any statement in the act about why this facility takes that route and the others do not.
The planning requirements are the strongest feature. Most of these hospital acts simply authorise a capacity and stop; this one requires an annual operational plan naming programs, projects, activities and budgetary needs, and makes any future expansion contingent on a development plan. That is a document trail a citizen or a journalist can actually ask for.
What is missing is the building. Section 3 funds salaries and operating expenses. Nothing in the act appropriates construction, sets a completion date, or says what happens in the interval between the hospital existing in law and existing in Maimbung.