Press Briefing by Sec Lacierda w/ Usec Herbosa & PhilHealth Pres. Banzon, 19 July 2012

When is the best time to transact with PhilHealth?

This post is intended to answer inquiries of some members on the office hours of PhilHealth or when is the best time to transact with PhilHealth.

Generally, you may transact with PhilHealth from Monday to Friday from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM at any PhilHealth Office nationwide. The same office hours are also being implemented in the operation of PhilHealth's Call Center that can address your concerns through phone. PhilHealth Offices also comply with the legal and special holidays as declared by the government.

You should also avoid the periods below if you don't want to wait for a long time as there will be more persons transacting with PhilHealth during these periods:

• 10th day of the month - deadline of premium payment of employers;
• last day of the quarter - deadline of premium payment for individual members;
• 15th day of the month - deadline of submission of the employer remittance report.

Hopefully, you won't have too difficult a time transacting with PhilHealth. Also be sure to share your experiences with us through Facebook and/or Twitter so that we may help PhilHealth improve its services through your feedback.

Call center print ad

How to Check Your Premium Payment Contributions

Discussed herein are methods with which to check your premium contribution payments, whether you are paying as an individual or are being remitted/paid by your employer. Individuals can request for a copy of your premium contribution history which will reflect your payments as an individually paying member or the payments remitted by your employers as posted in the PhilHealth database.

• Phone Inquiry
• You may contact the PhilHealth Call Center at (02) 441-7442;
• You may call the Collection Section of the nearest PhilHealth office.

• Email Inquiry
• Email your request for a copy of your premium contribution history to info@philhealth.gov.ph.

• Online Inquiry
• PhilHealth currently does not provide an online facility for you to view your premium contributions online. We will update this as soon as the service is available.

You may request for a copy of your premium contribution history to be emailed to you in any of the above methods. You would need to inform them of your PIN, full name, birth date and your current employer (if any).

PhilHealth Call Center

PhilHealth recently unveiled its new call center to address the numerous calls and queries regarding PhilHealth services and benefits.

The access number is 441-7442. Outside Metro Manila, you may need to append the area code (02). Again, the access number for PhilHealth's call center is (02) 441-7442.

It is manned by ten customer relations agents, and is available weekdays from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM.

Honestly speaking, I don't think this is nearly enough. If it were up to me, it would be open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in order to address the PhilHealth concerns of members. Imagine someone rushing a loved one to the hospital during the wee hours of the morning with no one to talk to about their PhilHealth benefits. Sure, hospitals have their own designated PhilHealth officers. But the sad truth is sometimes these PhilHealth officers are not fully aware of the correct guidelines when availing of PhilHealth benefits...or worse, have their own procedures which may even be totally different from the actual ones.

Private hospitals are businesses first and foremost, meant to earn profit. Sometimes the procedures they give to the members are meant to benefit the hospital, and not necessarily the member.

Well enough about that, let's explore that aspect in a future post. For now at least, PhilHealth should be more accessible to members queries and concerns.

If you do try calling the hotline, let us know how it worked out for you. Feel free to enter whatever comments or observations you may have. We're pretty sure someone from PhilHealth will get to visit this blog sooner or later and pick up on your feedback...whether good or bad.