Advancing Workplace Healthcare: InLife Benefits and The Medical City Partner for Chronic Care

InLife Benefits and The Medical City Launch First-of-Its-Kind Corporate Chronic Care Program

InLife Benefits and The Medical City have officially signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to launch an insurer-led Chronic Disease Management Program (CDMP) tailored specifically for corporate accounts and their workforces. This groundbreaking alliance represents an industry-first collaboration. It seamlessly blends the expansive corporate network and corporate employee benefits expertise of InLife Benefits with the extensive clinical, preventive, and chronic care capabilities of The Medical City.

Under the terms of the agreement, InLife Benefits will operate as the primary insurance partner, taking charge of identifying eligible corporate clients and coordinating their integration into the healthcare initiative. Meanwhile, The Medical City will serve as the core clinical partner, supplying the medical experts, specialized care teams, physical facilities, and structured patient care pathways required to test, monitor, and treat corporate members dealing with chronic health conditions or high-risk factors.

The program arrives at a critical time as lifestyle-related illnesses continue to strain Filipino households, corporate employers, and the national healthcare infrastructure. Maria Noemi G. Azura, President and CEO of InLife Benefits, emphasized that prevalent conditions like hypertension and obesity affect a massive portion of the adult population in the Philippines. She warned that if these risks are left unaddressed or are not detected early, they can quickly progress into severe medical complications, including diabetes and advanced cardiovascular diseases. 

“About 1 in 3 Filipino adults has hypertension or roughly 16.8 million people, yet only around 1 in 5 has it under control. Almost 4 in 10 Filipino adults are overweight or obese, increasing the risk of diabetes, heart disease and other chronic conditions,” said Azura. “The role of the insurer should not begin when somebody gets sick and end when we pay the claim. We need to help our members stay healthy, identify risks earlier, and help those who already have chronic diseases manage them better.”

Shifting Employee Health Care from Curative to Preventive

The newly launched CDMP aims to transform corporate employee healthcare by moving away from a traditional, reactive curative model—where medical attention is often delayed until an illness has already progressed. Instead, the program prioritizes proactive wellness through comprehensive health risk assessments and risk stratification. Once an employee’s specific risk factors are evaluated, they are guided into a personalized care pathway tailored precisely to their medical needs.

This strategic approach focuses on three critical pillars:

• Earlier Screening: Detecting potential health complications long before symptoms manifest or worsen [CDMP].

• Regular Disease Management: Providing continuous support and monitoring for ongoing lifestyle conditions [CDMP].

• Continuity of Care: Establishing a steady relationship between employees and clinical teams to avoid health gaps [CDMP].

“Through CDMP, we want to champion screening and prevention of Chronic Diseases by providing benefits to our employees and to our members even before catastrophic claims are necessary,” said Dr. Isabel Umali, Deputy Medical Director of InLife Benefits.

Coordinated Support and Clinical Infrastructure for At-Risk Workers

For corporate employers, this strategic alliance offers a highly coordinated framework to support team members who are either currently living with or at risk of developing serious chronic conditions. By streamlining navigation across various medical touchpoints, the program ensures employees receive timely care. This proactive management significantly reduces the likelihood of avoidable health complications, creating a healthier workforce and paving the way for more sustainable, cost-effective healthcare utilization over time.

The Medical City provides the heavy-duty clinical infrastructure required to sustain this seamless patient journey. Their comprehensive medical services cover the entire continuum of chronic care, including:

• Initial Screenings: Early detection and testing for prevalent non-communicable diseases.

• Regular Monitoring: Continuous tracking of vital health indicators to prevent sudden medical crises.

• Targeted Treatment: Dedicated clinical protocols for widespread lifestyle conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, and dyslipidemia (abnormal cholesterol levels).

A Shift Toward Proactive and Long-Term Wellness

For Dr. Ruben G. Kasala, Executive Vice President and CEO of The Medical City Ortigas, this strategic partnership underscores a necessary evolution in modern medicine—one that prioritizes stopping chronic illnesses and their subsequent complications before they spiral into advanced stages requiring intensive hospitalization. Instead of relying on a system that waits for individuals to become severely ill, this initiative aims to proactively anchor patients in routine tracking and wellness management.

“We are going to continue to focus on preventive healthcare and lifestyle management,” explained Dr. Kasala, emphasizing that silent symptoms should never equal complacency. “Even if patients are not feeling anything at the moment, it is important to monitor the disease, take the medication, and focus on lifestyle management. Once complications set in, it impacts the quality of life and the lifespan of the patient.”

End-to-End Continuity in the Patient Journey

This proactive methodology will be seamlessly executed by The Medical City’s dedicated physicians and specialized care teams across every phase of the employee health lifecycle. Rather than offering isolated medical checkups, the clinical teams provide continuous, end-to-end care that starts with comprehensive initial health screenings. From there, the program moves into regular monitoring of vital health metrics and directly transitions into targeted, expert treatments whenever medical intervention is required, ensuring no employee falls through the cracks of the healthcare system.

“We want to make sure that we screen them early, manage them, so that we delay complications related to these diseases,” said Dr. Mariann Almajar, Cardiologist and Chief Medical Officer of The Medical City. “As a network, we’ll be able to take care of the patients from the clinic to the hospital.”

Racquel R. Cagurangan, Group Chief of Strategic Accounts and Patient Experience at The Medical City, emphasized that this strategic collaboration will unlock critical patient outcome data. By consistently capturing these insights, the program will significantly strengthen the clinical delivery of long-term preventive care. Over time, analyzing this dataset will allow both organizations to transition from a reactive healthcare model into a highly advanced, predictive approach to healthcare, mapping out and mitigating employee wellness risks long before they manifest.