For now, cashless medical treatments are back

The cashless insurance cover has been partially restored for emergency care in all hospitals empanelled for it, providing some respite to harried patients. HT reports

The cashless insurance cover has been partially restored for emergency care in all hospitals empanelled for it, providing some respite to harried patients.

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Those with cashless treatment policies can now use the facility for all emergencies, including intensive care unit stays, cardiac procedures and accidents, until a permanent solution is reached between hospitals, insurance companies and Third Party Administrators (TPAs), who process the insurance claims.

On July 1, public insurance companies removed a large chunk of private hospitals from the list of cashless treatment on grounds that there were massive variations in treatment rates for the same procedures.

Of the 9 crore people with health insurance in India, 6 crore have public insurance cover. About 25 per cent roughly 1.5 crore are cashless policyholders.

“We do not want people to suffer and we didn’t stop the facility all of a sudden. By July 1, we had identified 80 of 300 hospitals in Delhi and the NCR for cashless transactions.

Now 145 have agreed to the list of 41 common procedures for which rates need to be rationalised,” said Dr R. K. Kaul, chairman, Oriental Insurance, who was present at the meeting.

Delhi and NCR has about 300 private hospitals, which include those with 50 beds and above.

The decision came on Friday in a Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) facilitated meeting of the CEOs of private hospitals and chiefs of public insurance companies.

“In the next 10 days, we should come up with a workable long term solution keeping in mind interests of all the parties involved. A task force has been formed for the purpose,” said Dr Naresh Trehan, chairman, CII health committee.

Dr Pervez Ahmed, CEO, Max Healthcare, and Pavan Bhalla, CEO, Raksha TPA, will lead the taskforce comprising representatives of private hospitals, insurance companies and TPAs to come up with feasible ways to help everyone.