Value-added Services in Health Microinsurance

This study explores the use of value-added services (VAS) in health microinsurance (HMI) schemes. It analyzes client value and business viability of VAS, and lists emerging lessons from the field. The study focuses on VAS that complement inpatient (IP) HMI. It reviews the experience of HMI schemes with VAS as well as programs that are not yet linked to HMI, mainly from India. The study reveals that HMI practitioners offer VAS to enhance a basic product by adding an element of outpatient (OP) care. Dial-a-Doctor services have achieved the greatest scale and proliferation. Technology-assisted diagnostics, when linked to an HMI scheme, offer significant potential as VAS for the future. Emerging lessons for practitioners include:

• HMI providing VAS should promote each service and educate clients about them;
• VAS, when outsourced to third parties, require HMI schemes that support them to have in-house medical expertise;
• Phasing of VAS is important, the core insurance product should reach some reasonable level of scale and stability before embarking on VAS initiatives;
• It is better to focus on one VAS innovation at a time;
• Government-sponsored schemes have taken the lead in driving scale of VAS.