PhilHealth’s digital remittance system gets int’l award

The Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) is once again encouraging employers to make use of the Electronic Premium Remittance System (EPRS) after it was awarded during the Virtual Social System Forum for Asia and the Pacific 2022 held in Geneva, Switzerland.

The International Social Security Association (ISSA) Good Practice Awards Asia and the Pacific Competition 2021 awarded a Certificate of Merit to PhilHealth for “pioneering digital transformation in premium contribution” among 168 entries received from 19 countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

The Priorities for Social Security Trends 2022: Challenges and Solution, an ISSA publication also recognized that with EPRS, “PhilHealth is taking the steps towards digitalization to eliminate

manual submissions of contribution-related transactions, minimize fraud and reconciliation issues; and save time and other resources that are otherwise necessary for manual submission.”

The EPRS, a webbased system for employers’ remittance, was initially introduced by PhilHealth in 2010 through its Circular No. 30, s-2010 enjoining employers to adopt the web-based application for the preparation and submission of their monthly remittance reports.

Over the years, PhilHealth has enhanced the EPRS allowing employers to verify the correctness of the employee contributions list and updating their employees’ master list, together with their corresponding monthly salaries.

The EPRS also generates a Statement of Premium Account wherein employers can make a statement of the total premium payable to PhilHealth as the basis for voucher and check preparation, and enabling payment through online banking services.

The EPRS was also instrumental in the country’s bid to reduce regulatory complexity and cost when the World Bank 2017 Doing Business recognized the Philippines for introducing “online filing and payment of health contributions.