Nationwide Electronic Insurance Planned

The Iran Health Insurance Organization is moving towards electronic registration of data.

The plan to eliminate paper booklets is currently on trial in seven provinces and will be implemented nationwide from December. Paper booklets are expected to be completely withdrawn by the end of March 2018.

Health insurance booklets have seen a great deal of medical fraud in addition to being a huge financial burden on the health system due to their costly preparation and distribution.

Mohammad Javad Kabir, managing director of IHIO, said that the paper booklets cost an annual 600 billion rials ($17 million) while the smart system would provide high security at minimum expense, IRNA reported.

Speaking on the sidelines of the 12th Conference of Health Insurance Directors, the official commended the 2014 Health Reform Plan while stressing “it is essential to ensure its sustainability.”

Funding, curbing the bloated bureaucracy, reducing expenses and ensuring general access to health services are key factors to its sustainability, he said.

He pointed to the Family Doctor Scheme as a strategic approach to help develop primary healthcare and guarantee the success of health reforms.

“We are making efforts to carry out the scheme on a budget of 20 trillion rials ($571 million) allocated by the Health Ministry,” Kabir said. The ministry’s total budget this year is 90 trillion rials ($2.5 billion).

  Prevention of Overlap

Preventing overlap of insurance coverage is another measure taken by the IHIO.

Public health insurance has so far covered 40 million Iranians -- almost half the country’s population. Out of this figure, 23 million are rural residents and 11 million are the deprived and underprivileged strata.

The IHIO is working towards expanding its services in collaboration with the Health Ministry. Screening for major diseases such as cancer and establishing the nationwide comprehensive data registration system, are among its future plans.

High ranking health insurance officials meet regularly in one of the provinces to discuss issues, strengths and weaknesses and make decisions to improve the health insurance system. The 12th conference was held in Ardebil city, in northwestern Iran, October18-20.

The mission of IHIO is to extend basic medical insurance to all strata of the insured in order to provide in timely and just manner accessibility to medical and diagnostic cares and services. One of the significant achievements of the Health Reform Plan was bringing 11 million people, who had no insurance coverage earlier, under its coverage. Among them, 86% lived in the outlying areas of the cities with the income of 75% of the households less than 10 million rials ($290).

The IHIO provides medical insurance services at 43,000 medical diagnostic centers.