The Employees’ Compensation Commission recently forged commitments with 16 various hospitals for a more effective Quick Response Program. With the closer coordination with hospitals, assistance to workers who sustained injuries, contracted sickness or died while performing their duties can now be provided immediately.

Based on the commitments of hospitals, they will provide the ECC with immediate information on emergency admissions and out-patient cases involving workers who sustained injuries or contracted sickness while working.

In turn, the ECC will right away conduct visits to the patients in the hospitals. In this way, the ECC can provide psychosocial counselling, if needed, and facilitate the provision of information to claim EC benefits.

“It is the ECC’s mandate to protect the rights of workers and promote their welfare, thus, we tapped the best hospitals all over the Philippines to provide us with information in case of work-related contingencies,” ECC Executive Director Stella Zipagan-Banawis said.

The following hospitals have so far pledged their commitment to the ECC and consequently, to ODWs: AFP Medical Center, Amang Rodriguez Memorial Medical Center, Capitol Medical Center, Cardinal Santos Medical Center, VRP Medical Center, Jose R. Reyes Memorial Medical Center, Novaliches General Hospital, Ospital Ng Maynila, Philippine Orthopedic Center, Rizal Medical Center, San Juan De Dios Hospital, St. Luke’s Medical Center (Q.C.), Philippine General Hospital, Quezon City General Hospital, Metropolitan Medical Center and PNP General Hospital.

Banawis added that the ECC continues to negotiate with other hospitals nationwide to make sure that patients with work-connected contingencies can be immediately assisted.

“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 do not wait for those who are in need to come to us, we go to them,” Banawis shared.