What is a Day Care Procedure?

Daycare treatments refer to those medical treatments and procedures that need hospitalization, but not for more than 24-hours as to medical advancements and technology, the treatment processes are now a lot shorter!

Popular examples of daycare treatments include cataract surgeries, nasal sinus aspiration, cancer chemotherapy, cancer radiotherapy, etc.

Digit Simplification: Why stay in a hospital unnecessarily when the required procedure takes just a day! 

Note: The important thing to keep in mind about daycare procedures is that, not all short-term treatments are considered as daycare procedures. Hence, the same shouldn’t be confused with OPD consultations.

Daycare treatment strictly refer to treatments, surgeries and operations, that require hospitalization below 24-hours due to advancement in medical technologies and procedures.

Whereas hospitalizations of over 24-hours are covered under “hospitalization expenses” in your health insurance, and OPD consultations required for smaller medical concerns like fractures, sprains and other doctor consultations are covered under OPD benefit or OPD cover, as specified by your health insurance policy.

Back in the day, health insurance policies only covered treatment and hospitalizations that went beyond 24-hours. However, thanks to medical advancements and technology, many treatments today can be done in much lesser time than before. 

These include treatments like cataract surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, dialysis, hymenectomy, and arthroscopic knee aspirations among many other procedures. 

Given the fact that many such treatments can be done under 24-hours and are not only needed by many patients but also include high healthcare expenditure, the IRDAI (Insurance Regulatory & Development Authority of India) introduced the same in health insurance policies. 

Thank God for that! Thereby, daycare procedures refer to such treatments that require hospitalization of less than 24-hours due to medical advancements. 

A good example of the same would be, when someone has to be admitted into the hospital for a cataract surgery, post which he/she will also receive care at the hospital and then be discharged within the same day itself. 

Daycare procedures go beyond just the operation or surgery. Daycare treatments usually involve many expenses such as that for diagnostics, medications, hospital admission, vitals, injections and post-hospitalization expenses as well.

Therefore, when you put these together; the total bill towards a specific treatment can be really high and this is where your health insurance comes in use, as it financially covers you for your treatment.