The Employees’ Compensation Commission, an attached agency of the Department of Labor and Employment,strengthens the bridge that connects the medical services to the occupationally-disabled workers, by entering into memorandum of agreement with various competent hospitals, medical service providers and medical experts nationwide.

These agreements are part of the intensive pursuit of ECC to address the long-time concern of reaching out to the ODW’s nationwide and bring to them the needed medical services, rather than concentrating said services in Metro Manila.

The pact aim to expedite provision of rehabilitation services; to secure suitable medical service to cater to different aspect of work-related contingencies; and to make sure that the attainment of these services are cost-effective, if not, cost free, to our workers who are already in an emotional distraught. These medical service providers coming from different regions are strategically selected to equally spread out across the country, as work-related accidents and injuries does not only occur in major cities but also in provinces.

ECC Executive Director Stella Zipagan-Banawis expressed that “these undertakings will ensure that workers who are facing work-related contingencies will be immediately provided with assistance from the ECC-partner medical establishments and experts”.

ECC recently inked agreement with 21 hospitals, medical service providers, and medical experts, 10 are renewals of the previous agreements–the complete list is found at the ECC website, www.ecc.gov.ph.

Anent to this, ECC also launches its ECC-Quick Response Program (QRP) Hospital Partnership project, which will immediately conduct visits to hospitals with patients sustaining work-related injuries of sicknesses. Likewise, ECC-QRP will provide psychosocial counselling and information to facilitate EC claims and benefits.

A commitment was also forged between ECC and partner hospitals, medical service providers, and experts, to constantly and regularly convene to assess and develop the evolving needs of the ODWs, and to make sure that it is updated and relevant. “This initiative is one of the ECC’s ways of reaching out to those who need assistance and to the workers’ who are in their most vulnerable condition. We help and we do not wait for those who are in need to come to us, we come to them,” Banawis said.