The Council of Cooperative Health Insurance (CCHI) has recently decreed that insurance firms providing medical coverage must include the CCHI’s phone number on the back of the cards they issue to clients.
The move aims to enable insurance customers to send their feedback and complaints to the CCHI regarding the services insurance companies provide them.
The deadline for enforcing this new procedure has been set for May 10.
In a recent interview, Abdullah Al-Ribaish, the secretary general of the CCHI, explained that the CCHI has dispatched field teams to the all the chambers of commerce and industry in the Kingdom to acquaint the insurance company representatives with the mechanisms of the new procedure.
The CCHI has also conducted a 30-day awareness campaign and has disseminated all the required information on its e-portal, he added.
The customer service center at the CCHI keeps a unified phone number to respond to enquiries made by all parties concerned with health insurance, including the insured, insurance firms and medical service providers, he noted.
Discussing medical insurance policies, he said the CCHI has issued a unified cooperative health insurance policy, which covers all medical fields.
The CCHI has also issued guidelines for means of obtaining approvals for certain medical services, whereby the insurance firms are obligated to respond to the requests sent from the medical service providers within a maximum 60 minutes, Al-Ribaish said.
The secretary general pointed out that the CCHI can not interfere or determine the prices of health care service rates, as these need to be decided based on a signed agreement between the medical service providers and the insurance companies.
Touching upon other related issues, Al-Ribaish said the CCHI has embarked upon an electronic linking program with the aim of facilitating the exchange of e-transactions between the council, insurance companies, health care providers and other involved parties such as the Saudi Food and Drugs Authority (FDA), the Council of Health Services (CHS) and the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties (SCHS).
Regarding the standards adopted by the CCHI in qualifying health care providers, he elaborated that the CCHI stipulates that any health facility should be authorized by the Ministry of Health, the staff have to be registered with the SCHS and that the facility must be technically equipped with the required amenities.
The general secretariat of the CCHI accredits heath facilities, in the pubic and private sectors, ensuring they meet the qualifications underlined in terms of administrative and technical cadres as well as having the efficiency to handle insurance companies.
Insurance cards to carry CCHI phones for feedback
