Does Your Health Insurance Plan Cover Home Treatment?

Due to the shortage in availability of hospital beds and with an increase in the number of patients affected by Coronavirus illness, health insurers are also providing domiciliary hospitalisation cover to the policy buyers. With a huge inflow of patients during the brutal COVID-19 pandemic, it is important for people to be aware of the significance of home treatment facilities offered under the health insurance cover.

What is the Meaning of Domiciliary Hospitalisation?

This refers to the situation when the insured individual needs to avail the healthcare treatment at home as they cannot be shifted to the hospital due to unavailability of hospital beds or due to their health condition. Without any doubt, a domiciliary hospitalisation has proved to be helpful to several COVID-19 patients as the hospitals could not admit them because of shortage of medicines, beds, oxygen, etc.

When Do You Need Domiciliary Hospitalisation?

A domiciliary hospitalisation is needed in the following situations:

• When your doctor advises you to take home treatment rather than getting hospitalized
• Even after all efforts a patient is unable to get a hospital bed or in case of its unavailability
• There are specific patients that cannot get admitted to the hospital because of co-morbidities and pre-existing illness
• There are certain health insurance policies that include Home Care Reimbursement feature, while others offer it as an in-built feature and some provide it as an add-on. As it is not a necessary or basic feature in health insurance policy, the coverage offered can vary from one insurance plan to another and from one insurance company to other insurance company.

What is Not Covered under Domiciliary Hospitalisation?

The following coverages are excluded under Domiciliary hospitalisation:

• While coverage for pre-hospitalisation expenses is covered under some of the insurance plans, post-hospitalisation expenses incurred by the insured for these treatments would not be covered under the plan.
• For some of the treatments for which the insured has availed for domiciliary hospitalisation would not be covered. These treatments are as follows:
  - Asthma
  - Bronchitis
  - Chronic Nephritis
  - Diarrhea, dysentery and Gastroenteritis
  - Epilepsy
  - Hypertension
  - Cold, cough and influenza
  - Rheumatism, Gout or Arthritis
  - Psychosomatic or psychiatric disorder
  - Pyrexia
  - Upper respiratory tract infection and tonsillitis, pharyngitis or Laryngitis

Conclusion

In case your current health insurance plan does not provide the feature of domiciliary hospitalisation, then there is no need to worry as you can always get the plan upgraded with the add-on covers or you can also decide to port it to a new health insurance plan at the time of purchasing the new plan. Moreover, ensure to go through the policy features and benefits carefully.

Also Read: Domiciliary Hospitalization Benefits Uncovered

How Does Domiciliary Hospitalization Work in Health Insurance Policies?

Disclaimer: This article is issued in the general public interest and meant for general information purposes only. Readers are advised not to rely on the contents of the article as conclusive in nature and should research further or consult an expert in this regard.