The Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office launches today, October 12, a streamlined procedure for the Individual Medical Assistance Program (Imap) that will eliminate the interview portion of requests for assistance.
Under the Imap, patients requesting financial assistance will no longer be required to have face-to-face interviews with PCSO social workers. A revised Imap form will gather the data necessary for a socioeconomic evaluation of patients.
The revised Imap forms will be available at hospitals partnering with the PCSO under the ASAP (At Source Ang Processing) Program, and at the PCSO’s Charity Assistance Department at its extension office at the Lung Center of the Philippines (LCP) in Quezon City.
The elimination of interviews will significantly cut processing time for applicants to the agency’s Imap that provides financial assistance for hospitalizations and surgery; treatments including dialysis and chemotherapy; prosthetics and implants; and other medical- and health care-related concerns. It will also reduce the long queues of patients at the PCSO’s LCP office.
The streamlined procedure falls under the agency’s ASAP Program that establishes PCSO help desks in private and public hospitals. The first to sign up for ASAP was St. Luke’s Medical Center in April, joined in July by 13 public hospitals. Other hospitals have signified their interest to participate in the program.
The PCSO Desk at partner-hospitals is manned by a social worker of the hospital who is trained by the PCSO in request evaluation and recommendation. The papers are then forwarded to the PCSO for processing. This arrangement makes it easier and more convenient for applicants to submit their paperwork, and makes it faster for PCSO personnel to process the requests.
We invite other hospitals to join the PCSO in providing medical and health care to all Filipinos by signing up for the ASAP Program.
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The PCSO continues to fulfill its commitment to deliver services to underserved and remote areas in Mindanao by delivering 11 ambulances to three provinces there on October 7. The recipients were Kitcharao, Carmen, Jabonga, Buenavista and Nasipit in Agusan del Norte; Trento, Sibagat and Loreto in Agusan del Sur; and
Tubob, Alegria and Mainit in Surigao
del Norte.
The brand-new emergency vehicles were handed out under the PCSO Ambulance Donation Program, guided by the “Universal Health Care for All Filipinos” policy of President Aquino.
My fellow PCSO Directors Mabel V. Mamba and Francisco G. Joaquin III and I met in Butuan City the various local government
officials who received the vehicles from the PCSO.
We also turned over checks totaling over P146,000 for the Lotto shares of La Paz, Prosperidad, Talacogon, Remedios T. Romualdez, Santiago and Bayugan City. Provinces, cities and municipalities that are host to PCSO Lotto outlets are entitled to a percentage share from the sales of Lotto and other PCSO products in their areas. The amounts may be used for the local government units’ (LGUs) social-welfare projects, particularly those that are medical- and health care-related, in line with the PCSO’s mandate.
During our visit to Dipolog two weeks ago to deliver 15 ambulances to Zamboanga Sibugay and Zamboanga del Norte, we also gave a total of P3.46 milllion in Lotto share checks to 17 LGUs: The province of Zamboanga del Norte, Dipolog City, Dapitan City, and the towns of Katipunan, Manucan, Polanco, Rojas, Rizal, Salug, Osmeña, Simbangan, Siocon, Jose Dalman, Labason, Leon Postigo, Liloy and Piñan.
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Congratulations to my chief of staff Jenny Ortuoste for bagging a Nick Joaquin Literary Award (NJLA) this year for the third year in a row.
The NJLA are given for short fiction in English published in Philippines Graphic magazine within a one-year period. A story is published almost every week, thus 45 to 50 stories each year are considered for the NJLA. Each published story is further selected from an average of 50 stories submitted to the Graphic every week.
Jenny has been consistently in the top 3 of the NJLA ever since first submitting to Graphic in 2012. She has also won a Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature, first place, for essay in English in 2011. Keep it up, Jenny!
Kudos also to the Graphic team, including Editor in Chief Joel Pablo Salud and Literary Editor Alma Anonas-Carpio, and to Aliw Media Group Chairman Ambassador Antonio L. Cabangon Chua for their support and promotion of Philippine literature in Graphic for the
past 25 years.
Atty. Rojas is vice chairman and general manager of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office.