Narayana Health insurance is a patient-centric model: Viren Shetty
New Delhi: Narayana Health (NH) multispecialty hospital chain which is known for creating an affordable, globally benchmarked quality-driven healthcare services model recently announced that it’s foraying into the health insurance segment as they believe that there is huge room to grow in this space and they can provide affordable treatment options to patients and bring something different to the table that’s run in a very integrated fashion and customers will appreciate.
Viren Prasad Shetty, Executive vice-chairman, Narayana Health speaking exclusively to ETHealthworld said, “A huge country like India, that is rapidly growing, ageing, living longer with increasing communicable and non-communicable diseases many are not able to pay out of pocket for other services in healthcare. So they have to get insurance and only 10 per cent of the country buys private health insurance. So the rest of the country is still not able to access insurance and there are a lot of innovations that are coming about in health insurance, which we believe we can participate in. And the other one is you cannot be a true healthcare provider if you are not addressing the service or the payment.”
Talking about the packages that they want to offer, of which they are in the early stages of development, Shetty said, “We will fall roughly into three brackets. The entry-level, mid-level, and comprehensive-level packages. The entry level is the standard package that most other insurance companies provide the only difference we will make it extremely cost competitive and the services you have to be on par with anything and this is your standard package which all insurance companies have. The next one is a middle range, the mid-range is the one that we hope will sell the most, which combines preventive care. It is being designed around families not specific to women or children. But it involves a lot more service on our side to ensure that we get a lot more data about the patients, we make sure they go for the checkup, particularly those we identify as high-risk. We have all the infrastructure here with our doctors and nurses who follow up with them and make sure whatever disease they are likely to suffer from whether it is a liver issue or kidney cancer, that we can take care of it medically, to prevention much before.””The third one is a comprehensive package. This is designed for people who either know they are sick with an underlying condition, or aged, or have been rejected from other insurance plans. So this will be expensive because as they know they are combating any chronic issues like cardiac or liver issues. But it can be managed is our point, you should not be denied health insurance, just because you happen to have an underlying disease condition. It will be a lot more comprehensive insurance plan from our side, we will spend a lot of effort in making sure that those conditions are managed. If they require a procedure that is also taken care of,” he stated.”If you want to buy an iPhone or two-wheeler you don’t do it without EMI. Unless you’re very wealthy, where you can pay upfront most people do it on a payment plan. That’s how many plan for large expenses. So that is a larger picture. We believe there is huge room to grow in this space, informed Shetty.
Sharing about what made NH foray into the insurance segment, Shetty said, “We want to get into the insurance segment because we always have been appreciated for our conceptualisation, as we have the experience of partnering with the government of Karnataka for a micro insurance programme. Where large groups of people pay very small amounts of money and cover a limited set of procedures, always wanted to turn to insurance. Initially, we thought we didn’t have what it takes to run insurance, also tried working with other insurance companies. But then realised that our interests are very divergent. As large insurance companies are looking at selling policies, hospitals are only interested in providing service and service costs money and money insurance company does not want to pay. So globally, the standard that a lot of organisations are moving towards is integrating the two being a payer and a provider. So that aligns with the incentive. So suddenly, as a hospital, I’m also bearing the insurance risk, which means I will not ask for unnecessary procedures, I will keep people healthy for longer, and I will look to improve the overall quality of the care that’s being provided at the most affordable costs because that’s coming out of our pocket. So we believe that we can bring something different to the table that’s run in a very integrated fashion and customers will appreciate it.”
When asked about the timeline the insurance plan will be rolled out, Shetty said, “It will take time. Hopefully next year, fingers crossed, because we are in the stage of getting the regulatory approval. We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from the regulator (IRDAI) we’ve explained our mission and how we want to design this. They’re very happy with everything we have presented. Of course, as we are starting from scratch and we don’t have insurance experience. We have to hire a lot of people to get things organised, so we’ll be starting just in Bangalore. And eventually, once it ramps up, we’ll take it all over the place.”
Source – ETHealth World
