Centre Works to Speed Up Hospital Mediclaim Track

Standardized forms, quicker settlements to bring more people under health cover

- Subhash Narayan

For harried patients and their relatives who twiddle their thumbs for frustratingly long to get medical insurance claim settlement or cashless authorization approved, help may be at hand soon.

The Centre is planning to make it mandatory for health insurance companies to approve cashless authorization requests within an hour, and final claim settlement requests within three hours, according to two people close to the discussions.

Alongside, a professional agency may be hired to design standardized insurance claim and application forms that are easy to understand and fill. Such forms would also ensure that insurance companies settle claims in full and within the specified period.

"The idea is to have BIS-type standards in the insurance sector that streamline the operations of the health insurance industry," said one of the officials cited above on the condition of anonymity. BIS or Bureau of Indian Standards is the national standards body of India.

The official added that the objective is to bring more people under health insurance coverage so that "insured patients do not face financial distress due to rising medical bills".

This is in line with the Union government's aim to provide affordable health insurance coverage and insurance to all by 2047, which the sector regulator Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai) had announced in November 2022.