With the launch of ICICI Lombard’s online platform - Health Advisor – comparing treatments and service costs of hospitals is easy.
Health Advisor enables policyholders and patients to rate 1000 hospitals across 10 Indian cities on a scale of one to five, five indicating the best. With this facility, users will be able to determine the quality of healthcare based on ratings by other users, a concept along the lines of rating restaurants in Zomato.
Mr. Bhargav Das, the MD and CEO of ICICI Lombard remarked that unlike rating restaurants or planning trips, currently, there is no facility to anticipate the quality of treatments. Health Advisor bridges this gap by making available to users the ratings of different healthcare facilities collaborated from about 10,000 customers. The parameters include cost, quality of infrastructure and personal experience of customers.
As assessed by the hospital administration department at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), the Health Advisor has information on 20 quality indicators such as doctor to patient ratio, infection control measures, etc. Mr. Sanjay Datta, Chief, Underwriting and Claims of ICICI Lombard General Insurance said, “We found that costs at hospitals in Mumbai and Kolkata were driven by doctors' fees and decision, whereas those in the Northern and Southern states were hospital-driven and hence more standardised.”