The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Insured in U.S., treated in India

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Feb 08, 2006

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Insured in U.S., treated in India

M.Dinesh Varma

NEW LIFE: Rakesh who underwent surgery for ventricular septal defect. — Photo: K. Pichumani

CHENNAI : In a twist to the win-win outsourcing game, a U.S. insurance firm has extended cover for its Chicago client undergoing treatment in a Chennai hospital.

The ball was set rolling when Chicago-based Indian parents of three-year-old Rakesh Ram Mahesh expressed a preference to treat their son at Frontier Lifeline hospital in Chennai. The boy had been diagnosed with a hole in the heart (Ventricular Septal Defect) and aortic valve incompetence, which required early correction.

The insurance company— Blue Cross Blue Shield — eventually agreed to foot the bill, but not without some thorough homework on the track record of the institution. The firm went the distance by even despatching a team to Chennai to inspect the facilities at the Frontier Lifeline.

The inspection team gathered details such as the number of paediatric surgeries done the previous year and the mortality rate before the sanction came through.

"All we were asked to bear was the cost of the flight tickets," said the boy's mother, M. Shakeela, whose husband Murugan Mahesh hails from Chennai. They had heard about the hospital from various sources.

"More than promotionals, the expectations sparked by word-of-mouth is all the more hard to match," K. M. Cherian, head of Frontier Lifeline points out.

The cost of the surgery here cost only 10 per cent of the $50,000 it would have amounted to in any U.S. hospital. After the successful surgery last week, Rakesh is due to be discharged on February 11.

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