Short answer. Not necessarily. Article 158 of the Labor Code excuses the requirement for an emergency hospital or dental clinic if a hospital or dental clinic is accessible from the workplace, and the employer arranges to reserve the necessary beds and dental facilities there for its employees' use.
What the law says
The requirement for an emergency hospital or dental clinic shall not be applicable in case there is a hospital or dental clinic which is accessible from the employer’s establishment and he makes arrangement for the reservation therein of the necessary beds and dental facilities for the use of his employees.
Labor Code, Article 158 — When Emergency Hospital Not Required. Read the full provision →
This is an exception, not a blanket rule
Article 158 is framed as an exception to a requirement that exists elsewhere — the requirement for an emergency hospital or dental clinic. It does not abolish that requirement outright for every employer near a hospital; it says the requirement shall not be applicable only where the specific conditions in this article are met. An employer cannot simply point at a hospital down the street and assume the requirement disappears without doing anything further.
Accessibility alone is not enough
The article requires a hospital or dental clinic that is accessible from the employer's establishment. Proximity in a general sense is the starting point, but the statute does not define exactly how close or how reachable it must be beyond that word. What is clear is that a hospital merely existing somewhere in the same city is not, by itself, what the exception is built around — accessibility from the actual worksite is the standard the article states.
The reservation arrangement is the second, separate condition
Accessibility on its own does not satisfy the article. The employer must also make arrangement for the reservation of the necessary beds and dental facilities at that hospital or clinic, specifically for the use of its employees. That is an affirmative step the employer has to actually take — a standing agreement with the facility — not something that happens automatically just because a hospital happens to be nearby.
What to check if this affects you
If your employer relies on a nearby hospital instead of maintaining its own clinic, both conditions need to be in place: real accessibility, and an actual reservation arrangement covering beds and dental facilities for employees. An employer that has neither confirmed accessibility nor put a reservation arrangement in place has not satisfied what Article 158 requires to be excused from the emergency hospital or dental clinic requirement, and that is worth raising if a workplace health and safety concern comes up.