Irdai asks hospitals to share facility data

BENGALURU: To enable users of healthcare facilities undertake informed decisions, the Irdai has asked insurance companies to share service statistics of hospitals’ performance and details of facilities they provide.

Interestingly, the regulator has also asked insurers to share total number of C-sections versus natural births in a year. The move to get insurers to share data on the number of caesarean procedures appears to be aimed at discouraging use of hospitals that undertake unnecessary procedures.

Irdai on Thursday published a draft circular where it proposed that going forward the public must have access to hospital information via insurers and TPAs.

This would include number of hospital beds, the doctor-patient ratio, doctor-nurse ratio, the number of qualified doctors, nurses in ICU and general wards.

Other performance-related data the Irdai wants published include average time for admission and discharge and average length of stay in hospitals.

Source: The Times of India