Establishment of Claveria Station Hospital

Section 1 defines a station hospital as a small hospital with not more than twenty-five bed capacity.
A station hospital manages common medical and maternity cases and surgical emergencies requiring an ordinarily short period of confinement (Section 1).
Cases requiring complicated major surgery and/or elaborate diagnostic examination or specialist treatment may not be confined in the station hospital; they must be transferred to regular provincial or regional hospitals (Section 1).

Section 2 establishes a station hospital in the Municipality of Claveria, Province of Masbate.
The hospital is known as the Claveria Station Hospital (Section 2).
The hospital’s bed capacity must be not less than ten nor more than twenty-five beds (Section 2).

Section 3 tasks the Secretary of Health to cause the establishment of the hospital.
The Secretary of Health must provide a suitable table of organization of not more than fourteen personnel (Section 3).
The Secretary of Health must promulgate rules and regulations for the hospital’s maintenance and operation (Section 3).
The Secretary of Health may, if the exigency of the service so demands, merge the hospital with local health units in the Municipality of Claveria, Province of Masbate, provided the public health work of the local health units will not be impaired (Section 3).

Section 4 authorizes an appropriation not to exceed fifty thousand pesos for the hospital’s establishment, maintenance and operation during the first fiscal year of its operation.
The authorized appropriation must be drawn out of any funds in the National Treasury not otherwise appropriated (Section 4).
After the first fiscal year, sums needed for the same purposes must be included in the annual General Appropriations Act.
Those later appropriations must be not to exceed fifty thousand pesos (Section 4).

The Act authorizes an organizational arrangement where the hospital may be merged with local health units under exigency, without impairing public health work (Section 3).
The Act’s funding rules operate in two stages: an initial appropriation cap for the first fiscal year and an annual cap thereafter (Section 4).
The Act’s operative effectivity is immediate upon approval (Section 5), with the enactment statement reflecting June 15, 1968 and no Executive approval.