State Life builds digital, service capacity to expand universal health benefits to entire Pakistan

The State Life Insurance Corporation of Pakistan (SLIC) has developed exceptional technical expertise and experience in delivering universal health insurance coverage to 180 million residents across three provinces in the country. This positions it ideally to extend customized insurance benefits nationwide, offering comprehensive social protection to all Pakistanis. The corporation stands ready to expand its services further, ensuring that more citizens have access to essential healthcare.

In an exclusive interview with The News, SLIC Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Shoaib Javed Hussain discussed the ongoing evolution of the government’s social health insurance coverage throughout Pakistan. He highlighted State Life’s commitment to providing accessible health insurance to all citizens, emphasising the corporation’s capacity to seamlessly integrate additional regions into the existing framework.

Building on the progress made by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab, Balochistan adopted the Balochistan Health Card Programme (BHCP) for its residents in late 2023, marking a pivotal step toward achieving nationwide healthcare coverage. Since its implementation, the programme has provided inpatient treatment to over 150,000 patients, offering much-needed relief and support to the region’s deserving population.

Moreover, the quality of services provided by public sector hospitals in Balochistan has significantly improved, driven by a funding mechanism linked to the standard of care. This approach has garnered greater accountability and enhanced healthcare delivery, ensuring that patients receive more effective and efficient medical attention.

“We are deeply committed to providing this crucial national service, ensuring that 180 million Pakistanis benefit equally from health protection without any discrimination. As a state-owned enterprise, our primary goal is not profit but to deliver an essential social service to our fellow citizens,” stated the SLIC CEO.

He said that every beneficiary family was given an annual uniform health insurance coverage of up to one million rupees, no matter which strata of society they belonged to. “There is a fixed amount of money in the pocket of every Pakistani for their hospital treatment and that of their family, which is exceptionally empowering,” he said.

He told this scribe that the State Life had been a part and parcel of the gradual rollout of health insurance coverage in Pakistan from day one when this facility was launched for the first time in the form of a pilot project under the “Sehat Waseela” initiative of the Benazir Income Support Programme in Faisalabad district in 2012. The SLIC was yet again the executing agency when the state-provided universal health coverage entered its next phase of covering outpatient services at the health facilities. The insurance coverage for the outpatient departments of the hospitals has been introduced in Mardan district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on a trial basis in partnership with the German Bank KfW.

Once the trial phase is over successfully, the OPD coverage could be rolled out in the rest of the province. Also, in KPK, organ transplant procedures are covered under the same insurance programme.

“Since its launch, the provincial governments keep evolving the service to ensure its financial viability, ascertain sustainability and improve the coverage to ensure maximum benefit goes to the most deserving sections of the population,” said the State Life CEO.

In the case of Punjab, the provincial government has prescribed public health facilities for the provision of maternity services, while a co-payment regime has been introduced in the case of expensive surgeries and treatments requiring families having financial affordability to an extent to pay for a minor part of such surgical expenses, he said.

“The co-payment in Punjab brings an element of self-check to this insurance coverage, discouraging unnecessary visits to expensive private hospitals for minor health issues that don’t require expensive interventions,” said Hussain.

The envisaged co-payment mechanism allows the programme to allocate more resources toward those who are most in need, enhancing equity and extending coverage to a larger segment of the underserved population. Additionally, it encourages responsible use of healthcare services, promoting efficiency and reducing strain on both public and private medical facilities.

He mentioned that although reforms had been introduced to improve the facility, the insurance coverage had been uninterruptedly continuing in the provinces where it had been launched. “Our learning process continues with the evolution of this essential programme,” said the SLIC CEO.

He informed The News that State Life had built a data centre in Islamabad, which is the first of its kind in the health sector of Pakistan, as it maintains a central database of each patient in the three provinces who get the treatment under this insurance coverage. The complete case history of every patient is fed into this database in real-time, no matter how remote the health facility is where they get the health coverage. “We have been constantly maintaining this database for the last two years and now aim to compile it into a comprehensive report,” said the SLIC CEO.

He said that this report would be formally launched and its findings would be shared with the provincial governments. “These findings and data in the report will go a long way to guide the government authorities on the expansion of the public health facilities and rollout of their emergency interventions in any troubled area witnessing an outbreak of any specific disease,” he said. He said the State Life aimed that the data reports would be published annually as a perfect guide to the health authorities in the country.

Hussain further told The News that 1,000 hospitals on the panel of the SLIC in every part of the country, including Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, were now digitally interconnected for this real-time data compilation. A vast panel of expert doctors, aided by the latest IT tools, also examines and verifies these reports to prevent instances of financial fraud, pilferage, or exploitation by unscrupulous elements.

A free smartphone application is available to every beneficiary family to instantly inform the latest status of the insurance coverage as to what extent the spending ceiling of one million rupees has been exhausted, he said. The same app also informs the user of the location of the nearest health facility and its specialities, which provide universal health coverage.