Cloudnine Hospitals Partners with AffordPlan for Customised Savings Solutions for Patients
AffordPlan, a financial savings platform for healthcare, today announced its partnership with Cloudnine Group of Hospitals. AffordPlan will now enable customized savings solutions for Cloudnine patients opting for elective procedures under Maternity, Childcare and Fertility treatments. AffordPlan is currently catering to 7 Cloudnine centres and will soon be present in all 19 locations across Bengaluru, Gurugram, Pune, Chennai, Mumbai and Chandigarh. AffordPlan is starting operations in Bengaluru through its partnership with the Cloudnine chain, after solidifying its presence in the Delhi – NCR region. The company plans to cover over 100+ hospitals in the next six months in Bengaluru alone.
AffordPlan offers a unique financial product that empowers hospitals and diagnostic centers to improve access and affordability of medical services for its patients. The fintech startup allows for planned savings which are ideal for non-emergency medical and expensive procedures. IRDAI indicate that less than 20% of Indians have health insurance cover. Much lower than that is the penetration of insurance products in the maternity and fertility treatments.
Tejbir Singh, CEO & Co-founder, AffordPlan says, “We are thrilled to start operations in Bengaluru with market leaders like the Cloudnine group. It is great to see world-class healthcare providers facilitating end-to-end maternity and childcare services without any hitches. This gives us an immense opportunity to create a hassle-free approach for the patients to cover their out of pocket healthcare expenses. Our aim is to provide solid alternative for patients to save with their choice of hospitals and avail benefits during Antenatal care period.”
Cloudnine is India’s leading chain of maternity hospitals, with world-class services and facilities for women and children. Headquartered in Bengaluru, Cloudnine has a cumulative total of 19 hospitals and clinics in various Indian cities and delivers over 1000 babies every month and has delivered over 50,000 babies to date. In addition to maternal care, Cloudnine also provides Gynecology, Pediatrics, Intensive Care, Fertility and Neonatal Care services. Cloudnine now offers its patients to choose AffordPlan’s prepayment savings plan to pay for non-emergency procedures.
Currently in India, there are no health insurance plans that solely cater to Maternity or Fertility, instead pregnancy-related expenses are covered as an additional benefit. The overall cost of pregnancy is double the cost of delivery of the child. Plans that cover maternity expenses usually have very long waiting periods (up to 4 years) and high premiums. Surveys suggest that infertility, in both men and women, has seen a 20-30 per cent rise in the last five years in India. In such a scenario, insurance companies tend to be apprehensive of high chances of claim payouts, if infertility treatments are included in the insurance policies. Complications related to maternity such as miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy are not covered under the health insurance policies. Also, infertility is not exactly considered to be an illness that needs to be treated, rather treatment is voluntary and is a non-emergency procedure.
Rohit M. A, Co-founder & Managing Director, Cloudnine Group of Hospitals stated, “We have always been aggressive in technology adoption. We want to position ourselves as a consumer focused healthcare services provider by bringing in state of the art technology and care. AffordPlan plays a vital role for our consumers by creating customized bite sized installments to cover their foreseen medical expenses and also attract new consumers through their offering. We see an enormous opportunity with current technology and are delighted to partner with AffordPlan to up our innovation and service offering.”
Affordplan acts as a solid alternative for patients to save with their choice of hospitals and avail benefits during Antenatal care period. Couples can plan ahead by creating customized bite sized installments to pay for their future healthcare expenditures. It’s a hassle free approach for the patients to cover their out of pocket healthcare expenses. Affordplan is positioned at the intersection of finance, healthcare and technology to solve the problem of healthcare unaffordability. It smoothens the cash flow for the patient by breaking up the lump sum amount into smaller manageable installments.
