PolicyBazaar, the most utilized insurance website and comparison portal, is envisaging stepping in the healthcare technology and services market. This initiative comes in a bid to provide its client-base with a reliable and free-of-cost online access to the website’s selection of quality doctors and medical consultants.
At the outset, Policy will begin partnering with 100 hospitals and 20,000 doctors, diagnostic centers and clinics until the end of March 2019. The vertical integration into healthcare will include offering a variety of healthcare services as well including hospital concierge services for its health insurance customers.
This will then allow PolicyBazaar to be by the side of its customers at the perfect time, which is at the time of claims.
“Our foray into the healthcare services space is in sync with the vision of expanding the social security net of India. With this venture, we seek to fulfill the need of providing quality and affordable healthcare of the burgeoning population at large by connecting the consumers with our in-house medical practitioners,” said the co-founder and CEO of Policybazaar.com, Yashish Dahiya.
The long-term plan of the insurance and comparison website is to provide profitable and custom-made claim and in-hospital experience to its customers. By working with insurers, the online platform also intends creating a new category of health insurance for Out-patient expenses (OPD). Offering non-chargeable online medical consultation to its user base over phone and chat is also in their agenda.
“The new portal will facilitate the creation of an inclusive healthcare system, which will eventually offer customized options for in-patient department insurance based on detailed analysis undertaken after studying consumer healthcare habits and patient’s interactions with the doctors,” he added.
PolicyBazaar.com is in talks with other insurance companies to offer an OPD insurance product, which will be the first of such, and the company is targeting offering 5 million OPD consultations by next FY.