Irda mulls unique identity numbers for hospitals

This will help identify charges for different procedures in different hospitals, says T S Vijayan

The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (Irda), through the Insurance Information Bureau (IIB), has begun an initiative to provide unique identity numbers for hospitals.

This, Irda Chairman T S Vijayan said, would help the authority identify hospitals and collect information on the charges for different procedures.

"IIB is collecting transactional data of all insurers. We are working with hospitals of the national accreditation agencies on whether we can uniquely identify hospitals. Unique identity numbers will be integrated with the pin codes of the areas and the names of hospitals. Substantial work is done. Once this is over, the next step would be to see what are the charges for different treatments by these hospitals as far as claims are concerned,"  said Vijayan, on the sidelines of a summit by the Indian Merchants' Chamber. "We are collecting transactional data from health insurers. We will then be able to know how much is charged for a particular procedure, by one hospital versus another hospital."

Insurers have welcomed the move. Kaushal K Mishra, CEO, Tata-AIG General Insurance, said this would enable both insurers and customers to know what were the exact charges of a particular hospital for any procedure. IIB officials said they had begun with 380,000 hospitals and zeroed in on 30,000. R Raghavan, CEO of IIB, explained the hospitals would be identified by their pin code, title and address.

"This will enable the industry to have data on the list of hospitals and the charges for different procedures. If new hospitals join the system, they will be added to the list," he said.

The bureau has also begun to collect data from life insurance firms, based on demographics and income. Raghavan said easy access to insurance data has been enabled by 'V-Seva', a facility for motor policyholders wherein one could send an 'SMS' of their vehicle registration number, which would be followed by details of their insurance plan.

Among other issues, Vijayan said product approvals for new products under the revised traditional product guidelines were mostly done and that several companies had begun introducing compliant products.

With respect to the new bank licences, Vijayan said that the Reserve Bank of India had sent them the list of applicants and asked if Irda had any concerns about them. "We have replied to them," he said.