Kozhikode: Collector N. Prasanth has come up with an ambitious project to provide cashless hospitalisation and treatment to all the natives of Kozhikode.
The contributory community health care programme will be implemented in cooperation with government and private hospitals in the district. Modelled on the health insurance format, it will provide free membership to BPL family members and take a small fee from the APL families.
The collector, through a post on his Facebook page, has called for voluntary help from experts to finetune the programme and will use the expertise of Indian Institute of Management and the members of the district collector’s internship programme.
“We have already been working on the project for the last one-and-a-half months and sought the help of experts to work out the nicer details,” Mr Prasanth told DC.
As a first step, a software programme is in the pipeline which would identify the government health schemes available for an applicant.
“When applicants log on to this application by giving the details, it would pick up all government schemes that are applicable to them. We will first see whether any of these schemes could be used for their free treatment and then use our health scheme as a top-up measure. The costs not covered under the other government schemes could be covered under our programme,” he said.
Informal discussions with major private hospitals in the district have already been held and they have given a positive nod.
“MLAs, panchayat presidents and other people’s representatives are backing up this effort. We are planning to bring in all hospitals under the programme,” Mr Prasanth said.
It is envisaged as a cashless health card- linked payment system, where the patients need not pay any money to the hospitals. It also tries to address the issues other private health insurance card-holders face while going for cashless transactions.
