The insurance industry is one of the few industries that has been relatively untouched by the latest technologies. The industry is characterised as one of the largest industries worldwide and deals with one of the most essential needs of a human being: health. This industry however suffers from a lot of inherent problems that do not allow for high satisfaction rates amongst customers and insurance providers:
Problem areas for customers:
– Access to medical history by the patient: Although the medical records of a customer are circulated amongst the different partners of the health insurer, the patient himself holds no proper medical records. In a situation where the patient needs to visit a different hospital in an emergency situation this poses a big problem.
– Timely processing of claims: Insurance companies typically have a prominently large span of time to process the claims. They include a margin in their contracts which ensures that the claim verification and approval process happens within that period. Such long periods stipulated in the contracts often lead to customer dissatisfaction.
– Security: The customer information stored with the hospitals or insurance providers is subject to leaks and identity thefts.
The characteristic features of blockchain technology such as accessibility, data integrity, immutability and automated execution are now being considered by several health insurance companies such as Quest Diagnostics, Optum and United Healthcare to tackle the afore-mentioned problems. The application of blockchain technology can:
- Expedite and improve patient diagnosis: The patient owns his/her medical information and has the rights to provide it as per needs without relying on any other external agency.
- Smart contracts would automatically trigger transactions which would again make the processing and denying claims easier and faster. This increases the customer trust.
- Sharing of data among the various providers in the network on a distributed ledger would ensure the data can be accessed easily anytime and also the risk of improper documentation and loss of data/documentation would decrease.
Needless to mention, the implementation of the blockchain technology would require a rigorous testing of the several functionalities, resulting in a significant time investment. However, the benefits in terms of more efficient operations and higher customer satisfaction look promising!
Sources:
Blockchain in insurance(Rep.). (n.d.). Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. doi:02/10/2018
Breteau, J. (2017, January 07). THE FUTURE OF BLOCKCHAIN IN HEALTH INSURANCE. Retrieved from https://www.the-digital-insurer.com/future-blockchain-health-insurance/
