CIMS offers financing options for cardiac surgeries

Heart patients have a reason to smile, as Ahmedabad based Care Institute of Medical Sciences(CIMS) has tied up with a financial advisory firm Index Advisory private limited in order to make credit available to patients without adequate or any medical insurance cover. The arrangement will enable patients to pay in equal monthly installments for surgical procedures.

Ajay Naik, director, CIMS said, "Almost 85 per cent of the patients who come to us for surgeries do not have adequate medical insurance cover, and end up paying from their pockets. And there are many who cannot afford to pay for expensive medical procedures. Thus, we have planned to start to make financing option available to them through various agencies for specific cardiac surgeries. "

CIMS has tied up with Mumbai based Index Advisory private limited, which in turn, is working with non-governmental organisations and philanthropists who would offer credit to a patient who cannot afford to pay for a cardiac surgery at the hospital. "We plan to start this initiative with pacemakers and de-fibrillators and can extend it to include the entire spectrum of heart surgeries depending on the response", Naik said.

Jose Peter, co-promoter of Index said that his agency would do a quick financial assessment of the patient's economic background and offer a decision within 24 hours whether he can be offered credit for the surgery.

"A patient has to pay around 15 per cent of the surgery cost upfront and then he would have an option to pay the remaining amount in equal monthly installments of 18 months to five years. Also, patients have an option to go for rental services of devices like pacemakers that are installed during the surgery."

Index has started a similar programme at the Mission Hospital, Durgapur in West Bengal a week back.

Meanwhile, CIMS plans to kick start its awareness campaigns for the ‘Healthy Heart for All’ initiative in the first week of February. The hospital claimed that apart from affordability, patients who were in need of pacemaker therapy were left untreated because of the lack of awareness, inability to diagnose the condition.