Day Care Procedures Covered under Health Insurance

Are you planning to buy a health insurance policy for yourself? It is certainly one of the wisest decisions that you can take, considering the various advantages offered by health insurance.

But wait! Before you buy the policy, you need to evaluate the various types of diseases that are covered under it. In addition to that, do not forget to check the list of daycare procedures that are covered by the policy.

Introduction to Day Care Treatments

Are you wondering what Daycare procedures are? These are the treatments that can be completed within one day, or more specifically in less than 24 hours. These procedures can be done under local or general anesthesia in an outpatient clinic or hospital, and there is no need for the patient to remain admitted to the hospital overnight. In today’s time, getting proper treatment is expensive but it becomes equally easy for everyone. If you are suffering from any disease, such as cataract and eyelid incision, you will get treatment within 24 hours and you do not need to be admitted to the hospital for treatment. Hospitalization means spending money, which no one wants.

Examples of daycare treatments include cataract removal, surgery for Retinal detachment, skin transplantation, etc.

Need for Your Health insurance to Cover Day Care Treatments

With the rapid advancements made by medical science in recent years, a number of treatments and surgical procedures which earlier used to require overnight hospitalization can now be completed in less than 24 hours. Treatment of many diseases has become extremely simple and hassle-free, thanks to the availability of advanced surgical procedures and state-of-the-art equipment to support physicians. Such treatments now fall under the category of daycare procedures.

The commonest example of this is a cataract-removal surgery. Even a few years back, the patient had to be hospitalized overnight to get a cataract removed, and the treatment used to take several days. However, now it takes only a few hours and unless there is any medical complication, the patient does not have to stay overnight. So, cataract operations used to fall under the category of overnight treatments earlier, but now they come within the daycare surgery list.

Thus, it is important that the health insurance policy you buy should cover as many daycare treatments as possible. This is extremely important if you want the policy to truly protect you.

Day Care Treatments that are Covered

The policy document of the insurance plan that you will purchase will contain a detailed list of all the daycare procedures that will be covered by it. The concept is simple to understand: if the daycare surgery list of the policy document does not cover a certain illness, then it is most likely that the expenses you may incur on its treatment for it will not be covered by the health insurance policy. Hence it is important to read the policy document very carefully.  These documents do not leave anything unsaid, so do not assume that a particular day-care procedure will be covered unless it is written in the policy wordings expressly.

Another thing to remember is that treatment in an outpatient department is not the same as a daycare procedure. While daycare procedures require the patient to remain hospitalized, even if it is for a few hours, OPD treatment generally does not. If the patient is going for an OPD treatment, he/she can simply walk away after the treatment is over. There is no hospitalization required in such a case, and therefore these treatments are not covered by health insurance.

The difference between an OPD treatment and a daycare treatment is often very thin, making it very confusing to distinguish between the two. For example, if the patient goes for the removal of dental tartar, then the procedure can be completed in less than an hour and is an OPD procedure. However, a dental surgery done to rectify a deformity in the teeth requiring hospitalization for a few hours will be treated as a daycare procedure. While both of these can be regarded as treatments for beautifying the teeth, a claim can be made for the latter procedure, while the expenses for the tartar removal cannot be claimed.

List of treatment

Some of the daycare procedures that are covered by health insurance and fall within the daycare surgery list are as follows:

• Operations on the eyes
• Incision of tear glands
• Incision of diseased eyelids
• Incision of the cornea
• Other operations on the cornea
• Removal of a foreign body from the lens of the eye
• Removal of foreign particles from the orbit and eyeball
• Operation of cataract
• Nose
• Excision and destruction of diseased tissue of the nose
• Nasal sinus aspiration
• Foreign body removal from nose
• Other operations on the nose
• Bones and joints
• Surgery for a ligament tear
• Surgery for a meniscus tear
• Removal of fracture pins/ nails
• Trauma surgery
• The incision on bone, septic and aseptic
• Mouth
• Removal or operations of tonsils
• Operations on salivary glands & ducts
• Dermatological (skin) procedures
• Skin transplantation
• Chemo-surgery to the skin

Some Health Insurance Plans with Daycare Option

Not, all but some of the health insurance plan covers daycare procedures. Well, every plan has its own terms and conditions for daycare procedures. Some of the plans will cover as per your sum insured amount, and some of the plans will cover for a long period of time.