TY - GEN AU - Andaya, Madonna A. AU - Cortes, Lalaine (Chairperson). AU - Caronan, Herminigildo, Jr. (Institutional Partner). AU - Flores, Corazon I. (Defense Panel Member). TI - An assessment of the deployment mechanism of the Doctors to the Barrios program vis-a-vis the compliance to the operational guidelines KW - Doctor and patient KW - Healthguidelines N1 - Graduate School of Public and Development Management N2 - One of the best ways of implementing all the strategies and accomplishing all the goals and objectives of the Aquino Health Agenda through Universal Health Care is through the Doctors to the Barrios Program. This is the deployment of doctors to areas which were doctor-less, far - flung, hard-to-reach, depressed and underserved areas for at least two years with the intention of retaining or absorbing the doctor after his/her contract with the national government to be able to sustain the programs done to achieve the vision, mission and the goals of DOH. Unfortunately, based in the experiences of the DTTBs from batches 24, 25, 26, 27 and 28 who are currently in the DTTB program and enrolled in the Masters in Public Management Major in Health Systems and Development, variety of problems exists which leads to non-completion of the two years contract of a DTTB, non- retention or non- absorption of a DTTB in its area of assignment and decrease of walk-in applicants in the program. Qualitative Research Method was used in this study for the assessment of the operational guidelines for the implementation of the doctors to the barrios program vis-a-vis the problems that they encounter during their deployment to their areas of assignments. Quantitative Research Method was applied which lead to the findings that pre-deployment/deployment, coordinating mechanism and monitoring and evaluation provisions of the guidelines were the root cause of the problems, thus the need to strictly implement the operational guidelines with close coordination through consultative meetings and workshop, hiring of additional personnel, review and amendment of policies and increase in the budget of the program ER -