Insurance, Cash-less Transactions, Standards

The recent issue in the press about Insurance refusing to honor cash-less transactions has caused a lot of heart burn. The major reason for this deadlock is due to lack of standards in Indian Healthcare industry. To be fair obviously the insurance company wants an audit trails of what, why and when something was done to the patient and the charges applied. However the way we practice medicine, there is no incentive or reprimand for keeping or not keeping medical records respectively.

The issue is of transparency. Friction with insurance can be reduced if the Signs, Symptoms and Diagnosis is recorded as per ICD and Procedures are recorded as per CPT and the Billing Master is mapped to the CPT codes. This how it is done world over, so why not in India. Obviously our medical colleges forgot to teach a us a lot of things!