Filed
First Reading
Second Reading — Committee
Second Reading — Plenary
Third Reading
Approved
EnactedNow
Bangsamoro Autonomy Act No. 76
In forceAn Act Upgrading the Datu Alawaddin T. Bandon, Sr. Memorial Hospital in the Municipality of Sibutu, Province of Tawi-Tawi, from a Ten-Bed Capacity Infirmary to a Twenty-Five-Bed Capacity Level I General Hospital, Appropriating Funds Therefor, and for Other Purposes
Capacity rises to 25 beds at Level I. Facilities and professional manpower are upgraded, the patient information system is modernised for data sharing between departments, and the hospital administrator must publish an annual report.
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Signed into law and operative unless later amended or repealed.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
A ten-bed infirmary on an island in Tawi-Tawi becomes a twenty-five bed Level I general hospital. Facilities and professional manpower are upgraded to match, and the Ministry of Health, with the finance ministry, approves the structure and the plantilla positions that go with it.
Two provisions are unusual for this kind of act. Section 4 requires the hospital's information system to be streamlined — comprehensive patient records in a simplified, easily comprehensible format, with seamless data sharing among doctors and authorised personnel across departments, so that clinicians treating the same patient are working from the same file. And Section 8 requires the hospital administrator to submit an annual report on operations, performance, financial expenditures and service delivery outcomes, copied to the local government units, and — the words that matter — made publicly accessible.
The act also does a small piece of legal housekeeping. The hospital was created by a national law in 1990 in the Municipality of Sitangkai. Sibutu was later carved out of Sitangkai, and the hospital ended up in the new municipality. Sections 1 and 2 record that history so the address in the founding law and the address on the ground finally agree.
Why it was proposed
To raise an island facility to hospital standard. The catchment argument is the same one that runs through the Tawi-Tawi acts: on this geography, referral means a boat.
Who it affects
- Residents of Sibutu, whose local option was a ten-bed infirmary.
- Patients whose records must move between departments and clinicians.
- Hospital staff, through the plantilla positions the ministries approve.
- Local government units, which receive the annual report and must coordinate on local health services.
Who would implement it
- Ministry of Health – BARMM, which sets standards, approves the structure and plantilla, and supervises and monitors
- Ministry of Finance, and Budget and Management, coordinating on structure and posts
- Ministry of Interior and Local Government and concerned LGUs, which must cooperate on local health service delivery
- The hospital administrator, who submits the annual report
Funding
Carries an appropriation. ₱50,000,000 initial, charged against the 2025 General Appropriations Act of the Bangsamoro, with operations thereafter in the annual appropriations.
What changes if it becomes law
- A ten-bed infirmary becomes a twenty-five bed Level I hospital.
- The patient information system is modernised for record-sharing.
- An annual report on operations, spending and outcomes becomes public by law.
- The health and interior ministries must coordinate with local governments.
- The hospital's legal location is reconciled with where it actually stands.
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
Section 8 is the best transparency provision in any hospital act in this registry, and it is better than it first looks. BAA 73 requires an annual report to the Chief Minister and Parliament — good, but a report to Parliament is a report a citizen must go and ask a committee for. This one requires the report to be *made publicly accessible*, and requires it to cover four things by name: operations, performance, financial expenditures, and service delivery outcomes. That is the difference between a hospital that is accountable to the government funding it and one that is accountable to the people using it.
The information system clause is the other thing worth noting, because it is the only provision in the health legislation read so far that concerns clinical quality rather than capacity. Beds, staff and buildings are what these acts normally legislate; this one also says the records have to work — comprehensible, shared, synchronised across departments. In a small facility where the same patient sees several people, that is not an IT detail, it is whether care is continuous.
What is still absent is a clock. No completion deadline, ₱50 million as a first instalment, and expansion left to whether the Ministry recommends it and whether funds happen to be available.