Short answer. The System is required to provide you with medical services and appliances appropriate to your sickness or injury throughout your entire period of disability, starting immediately after it happens. This coverage is not unlimited, though — it is subject to expense limits the Commission prescribes.
What the law says
Immediately after an employee contracts sickness or sustains an injury, he shall be provided by the System during the subsequent period of his disability with such medical services and appliances as the nature of his sickness or injury and progress of his recovery may require, subject to the expense limitation prescribed by the Commission.
Labor Code, Article 185 — Medical Services During Disability. Read the full provision →
Coverage begins immediately, not after a waiting period
Article 185 is written to start coverage right away: immediately after an employee contracts a sickness or sustains an injury, the System is to provide medical services. There is no built-in delay in the text before the obligation to provide treatment begins — it attaches at the point the sickness or injury actually happens, not after some later approval step or waiting period.
What is covered is tied to your actual medical needs
The article frames the required medical services and appliances as whatever the nature of his sickness or injury and progress of his recovery may require. This ties coverage to the individual case rather than a fixed, generic package — what is provided is meant to track the specific condition and how the recovery is actually progressing over time, rather than staying static and unchanged from the very first day of treatment.
Coverage runs for the period of disability
The obligation to provide services continues during the subsequent period of his disability — it is not a one-time benefit at the moment of injury, but something meant to carry through the disability period as the treatment and recovery unfold, for as long as that disability period actually lasts given the specific circumstances of the case at hand, and not merely for a fixed number of days set in advance.
The coverage has a built-in limit
Article 185 does not promise unlimited medical spending. It expressly makes the obligation subject to the expense limitation prescribed by the Commission. The article itself does not state what that limitation is, so the specific ceiling on covered expenses is not something this provision settles on its own — it points to a limit set elsewhere, by a body other than the System that is actually providing the treatment.
Who the obligation actually falls on
Article 185 places the duty to provide these services on the System, not directly on your employer as an individual payer. It does not itself describe how treatment gets approved, which providers or facilities you must use, or what happens if you seek treatment outside whatever process the System has in place. Those procedural questions sit outside this article's text, which fixes only that the System owes you medical services tied to your condition, within the limits the Commission has set.