Why don’t insurance companies insure diabetic kids?

The Diabetes Blog

By Allie Beatty

Ed Hinerman, a life insurance specialist with the Hinerman Group, was posed an interesting challenge recently. For years he has successfully found affordable life insurance for many adults with type 1 diabetes, but he had never been asked about life insurance for children with Type 1 diabetes until now.

After speaking with underwriters in the top 40 or so companies, he found a discernible lack of interest due to lack of data. Companies would say that they couldn’t consider someone with type 1 diabetes until they were either age 15 or age 20. A peer in the industry told Ed the knee jerk reaction was because insurance companies haven’t done mortality studies on children. They simply don’t have any data upon which to base the pricing for products. Uh oh!! That coupled with the fact that there really isn’t any financial incentive for them to study and create products for a relatively small market that would produce relatively low premium, kind of sets the tone. Well, now the war has been defined and the battles are becoming clearer.

When Ed contacted the ADA for assistance in this matter – hold your breath (it’s a shocker!) – they turned a cold shoulder on a diabetic’s need. What if the diabetic’s parents were doing what so many families do – and trying to buy a whole life policy to help pay for their kids college someday? It’s really not fair! Here’s where fair begins — Ed asked me to gather some facts it will take to get the insurance companies attention. Does anybody have any idea of the mortality rate of children after being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes?

Bottom line. Life insurance companies make big money and for them to cut and run from children just because it might not make them more big bucks, or because they really haven’t done their homework and aren’t interested in doing it, isn’t acceptable. Game on! I hope we can make a good showing, at the very least – hit one out of the park for the fans. Thanks for inviting me to play, Ed!

Mobile Phones To Support Healthcare In Rural India

Mobile Phones To Support Healthcare In Rural India

Ericsson and Apollo Telemedicine Networking Foundation (ATNF), a part of the Apollo Hospitals Group, the Indian healthcare powerhouse, have taken a major step towards helping bridge the digital divide in rural India by laying the foundation for the introduction of mobile health services. Telemedicine delivered using HSPA technology will enable the provision of affordable and accessible healthcare to millions of people in remote areas.

More than a million people, predominantly women and children, die each year in India because of a lack of healthcare. A further 700 million people have no access to specialist healthcare, as 80 percent of specialists live in cities. At the same time, the teledensity of India is increasing at a phenomenal rate. Telemedicine harnesses telecommunication technology to deliver healthcare and education to patients in remote regions. It enables easier access to healthcare for rural populations, helping to provide critical health information, save time and money, and reduce the need for travel.

A memorandum of understanding (MoU) between Ericsson and ATNF will enable them to work together to educate people and to publicize, promote and implement the use of telemedicine deployed as an application over broadband-enabled mobile networks.

ATNF will provide expertise in telemedicine, in the form of applications that provide instant medical advice remotely over the network. This will increase access to quality healthcare once the HSPA network is in place, and sets the stage for the creation of a stable ecosystem, based on WCDMA/HSPA technology, to support a range of innovative services.

The initiative builds on Ericsson and Apollo’s previous collaboration in 2007 for the Gramjyoti project which showcased the benefits of mobile broadband applications across 18 villages and 15 towns in rural areas.

Mats Granryd, President of Ericsson India, says: “Mobility has proven to be a major catalyst for social and economic empowerment, and a key ingredient in helping to bridge the digital divide. Through our ongoing partnership with Apollo, we are putting an ecosystem in place to support telemedicine applications once the 3G network is deployed.”

Prathap C. Reddy, Chairman of Apollo Hospitals Group, says: “With the availability of wireless technology, mobile health will be integrated into the healthcare delivery system. The new mantra could well be ‘Healthcare for anyone, anywhere, anytime.’ In our silver jubilee year, Apollo Hospitals dedicates itself, to make mobile health a reality for everyone in India.”

This agreement is part of Ericsson’s support for the UN Millennium Development Goals, which aim to halve extreme poverty and hunger by 2015, while improving education, health and gender equality. Ericsson has been working on several initiatives to demonstrate the use of telecoms in healthcare provision.

online healthcare

According to the latest issue of “Outlook Business” magazine, the healthcare services in India’s private hospitals is getting world class. However, the customer service at the same private hospitals is not able to catch up with the rapid developments in the infrastructure of the hospital. The patients are happy with the patient care but they are still unhappy with the quality of customer care they get. Waiting in the queue, doctor not available on time, payment hassles etc.

A new trend that is coming up in this eco-system of traditional healthcare delivery through Hospitals / Clinics is “Online Healthcare”. The doctors and hospitals can look at this as a channel that filters the patients and then forwards them to the doctors and hospitals for treatment.

Online Healthcare includes a few important aspects as mentioned below. At the core of the system is a central web-site or portal.

• It provides an access to doctor online for Live Chat. The patients can use the Internet and chat with the doctor. The doctors can provide medical advice to handle the current situation and then refer the patient to the nearest hospital and doctor in their locality. Doctors also provide answers for the common medical queries.
• It provides patient generated reviews about the hospitals and doctors and also the contact details of the doctors and hospitals.
• It provides a Forum where people of similar health problems can discuss with each other.
• The website also provides content in the form of answers to common queries, which the patients might have.
• The website has common health tools and price listings for the common medical procedures in hospitals.
• Patients can buy medicine over the Internet and it will be delivered to their home.

Such trend is already popular in the USA and Europe. Many websites like www.webmd.com is widely used worldwide. In India, www.healthcaremagic.com has recently started this service and has already referred hundreds of patients for OPD and IPD procedures in Bangalore.

From a patient’s perspective, he gets to know a lot before rushing to a hospital. Let’s see the trend now. If the patient falls ill, he will ask a couple of friends about their experiences with doctors. The information from these people is limited. It is not in terms of information, but in terms of the quality of information. The information might cover everything about how people felt about the experience, in terms of the doctor’s demeanour, the cleanliness of the place among other things. But the information will be limited in terms of important criteria like qualifications of the doctor, experience of the doctor, affiliations of the doctor among other things. It is understandable in the current scheme of things.However this is the age of information and we need it in adequate amounts to make informed decisions about our health. Without getting into lengthy debates about the healthcare scene, the Online Healthcare service providers are trying to offer more information and assisting people in their quest for informed healthcare decisions.

This seems to be the beginning of Consumer Driven Healthcare Informatics in India. It’s a kind of decision support system where the patients get right advice and recommendations for free. So whatever used to be a “word of mouth referral” is slowly migrating to “click and find” referral. What else can a patient expect – his appointment is fixed with a specialist, he knows the consultation fees, and when he goes to the hospital or clinic, he does not have to wait in a queue and to his surprise, he finds that the doctor was expecting him.

Online Healthcare services open up new channels for young doctors who are preparing for their post-graduate examinations but need to earn while they prepare for examinations. It is also good opportunity for those doctors who do not want to set up their personal clinics. It is also a good avenue for senior retired doctors in medicine and family practice, who bring in decades of experience in providing guidance and suggestions to patients.

Seeing the way healthcare services are moving today and the way people are demanding a good customer service, it seems Online Healthcare is a positive step towards improvement.