Insurers should learn from Telecom companies to penetrate rural areas

Today, India stands at second position in population with 1.21 billion people. Still, sixty years after Independency, healthcare access in rural areas is still one of country's greatest challenges. 

The reasons being unevenly distributed healthcare facilities, unavailability of trained healthcare personnel, poor quality of drugs and lack of diagnostic tools. Every year more than one million Indians die, maximum of them being children and women. 

Overall, less than fifteen per cent Indians has health insurance. Rural health insurance is less than ten per cent. Insurance companies should learn from telecom companies in penetrating rural areas. 

In late 90s, when telecom companies started venturing into rural markets, they faced big obstacles due to lack of infrastructure. Unshaken, they first established mobile networks and then studied the needs of rural population and then customized their products for rural markets like cheap handsets and tariffs. 

The companies approached customers at their doorsteps with attractive tariffs and products. The result being, nowadays even poorest of the farmers have cell phones. Insurance companies could learn from telecom companies to penetrate rural regions. 

In the first place, insuring companies should understand the rural customer needs, streamline services, control cost, good customer service and cheap pricing. As the maximum of people in rural areas has limited buying capacity, insuring companies should bring in products at affordable rates just like the telecom companies did.

Insurers Compel Hospitals to Cut Down Inflated Bills

Until recently, most of the hospitals in India had a different billing structure for patients covered under insurance. These patients were charged higher than the normal patients. The insurance industry wanted this to end and answered to this dual billing structure by bringing in its own standard rate cards for various treatments and made a panel of sanctioned hospitals for cashless treatments. 

Now the inflated billing has stopped and if any patient is overcharged, the insurers force hospitals to refund the extra amount to patients. This way, patients are benefitting from the standardized billing structure for common medical treatments. This has also cut down the health insurance rates and has reduced pressure on the insurers.

Health insurance companies have also negotiated to bring most of the major hospitals in the preferred provider network (PPN). Currently, cashless treatment is available in 456 hospitals in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore.