Mediclaim

How does Mediclaim Policy work?

Cashless is a mechanism wherein a patient is treated in a network hospital, then insurer settles either the part of the claim or the entire claim with the hospital. It means, a patient doesn’t need to pay a penny to the hospital for the treatment. There are certain procedures which you need to follow to ensure the smooth claim process.

At the first level, all empanelled hospitals will have an insurance desk in their premises. A policyholder has to obtain a pre-authorization form from this desk, which has to be dully filled with correct information because any missed detail will only delay the entire process. This filled form needs to be stamped by the hospital and the doctor and then it has to fax across Third Party Administrator (TPA) or the insurer. After carefully examining the form, the company will approve a certain sum and send a fax back to the hospital saying that ‘X’ amount has been sanctioned for the treatment.

Let us understand this procedure with an example. If the hospital has given a treatment cost of Rs 4 lakh, the insurer and TPA will rework and for instance, approve Rs 3 lakh for treatment. Now, they will inform the hospital that they will reimburse expenses up to Rs 3 lakh only under cashless and if the total cost would be more than this limit, they will look at it later. However, at the time of discharge, the total billing amount comes at Rs 3.60 lakh. In this case, the policyholder has two options. The first option is, he will send all discharge letters and final bill copy to the insurer and wait for the revert. No doubt, it will take time. The other option is, policyholder himself pays the remaining amount, which is Rs 40,000 in this case, and then he submits those original bill receipts to the policy provider to get reimbursement of Rs 40,000.