Cashless facilities may now be accepted by every single hospital in the city in a month’s time. By the end of this financial year, all the major hospitals in Mumbai will join the fray of preferred provider’s network (PPN), said a senior insurance company official. This will ensure transparency in rates of treatments provided by the hospitals and help patients avail the cashless facility.
“We are in talks with many hospitals now. By the end of this financial year on March 15, we will bring all the hospitals in the PPN fold,” said Dr Mohammed Mukhtar, health strategist and manager of MD India Health Care Services.
This week itself, Cumballa hill hospital and Heart Institute in Kemps Corner has signed the agreement with General Insurance Public Sector Association (GIPSA). The Fortis group, consisting of 53 hospitals all over India, is also in talks of signing the agreement.
They have four hospitals in the MMR region.The Fortis group in Mumbai includes their hospitals in Mulund, Mahim, Vashi, and Kalyan.
GIPSA is a group of four public-sector insurance companies that decided to restrict the cashless medical facilities to hospitals that agree to join the PPN.
The insurance companies part of GIPSA are India Assurance Company Ltd, United India Insurance Company Ltd, Oriental Insurance Company Ltd and National Insurance Company Ltd.
The agreement signed is in respect to 41 surgical services.
Vijay Shetty, the managing director of Cumballa hill hospital said, “We were in negotiations with GIPSA for some time now. We signed the agreement this week. This will ensure that the patients can avail of the benefits of cashless medical insurance policy. A patient can walk into our hospital and not worry about payment.”
“We are in the process of signing it. We would certainly not like to discomfort the patient any further. We also want to let patients have their cashless facility,” said Dr Uma Nambiar, zonal director-Mumbai, Fortis Healthcare Ltd.
If any health complication occurs, GIPSA is willing to accept about 3-4% of the deviation with a justification for the same. So far, the count of hospitals on the cashless mediclaim network in Mumbai is over 170.
