Objective:

The cost of any Hospitalisation has become prohibitive. Many members are not covered by Medical Insurance Companies for one reason or the other. The cost of Medical Insurance premium(a) are increasing every year. The proposed Scheme envisages defraying a part of the Hospitalisation expenses incurred by the member and thereby mitigating the financial hardship.

Corpus Fund:

The Corpus of the Hospitalisation Reimbursement Scheme, hereinafter called the “Jeevan Raksha Scheme” shall be built by a One Time Lifetime Non - Refundable donation of Rs.12,000 by each member and by donations from well-wishers.

Beneficiaries:

The Scheme shall be open ONLY to members and / or their Spouses of UCOBank Retirees’ Association (Karnataka) who have donated a sum of Rs 12,000 towards the Corpus of the Scheme. The particulars of the Spouse should be mentioned in the application form prescribed while making the application for being a member.

There shall be no age bar. The surviving spouse of the member shall continue to get the benefit even after one of the Spouses is no more.

Implementation:

The implementation of the Scheme shall be only after the Corpus Fund for the Scheme reaches a minimum sum of Rs 6.00 Lakhs or 1st of April 2011 whichever is earlier. The Trust may, however commence reimbursement of expenses from the date of receipt of the 1st Quarterly Interest on the Corpus, subject to availability of Interest Funds as on that date. The Trustees shall decide the date of Implementation.

Benefits:

As on date, the Scheme envisages that a sum not exceeding Rs 25,000 may be reimbursed towards expenses to the member and / or his / her spouse in the event of Hospitalisation to either of the spouse(s). The total claim(s) however, is subject to a maximum of Rs 25,000 per financial year.

Terms and Conditions:

The above benefit as envisaged shall be governed by the following Terms and conditions:

1. The Scheme is in addition to any existing Medical Insurance Scheme that may have been subscribed by the member. In case a member or his spouse is covered by any Medical Insurance Scheme, the claim with such Insurance Company should be exhausted first BEFORE putting forth any claim to the Trust. A settlement letter from the Insurance Company / Welfare Fund / Hospital should be submitted to the Trust along with the application. The balance of the amount not settled by the Insurance Company shall only be settled by the Trust.
2. The amount to be reimbursed shall depend upon the amount of interest earned on the Corpus as available as on that date.
3. The claim should be preferred within 30 days from the date of Discharge from the Hospital / Nursing Home, or claim received from the Insurance Company, if any.
4. The reimbursement of hospitalisation expenses shall include the cost of daily bed charges, medicine prescribed during hospital stay and diagnostic tests conducted by the Hospital during the stay in the Hospital.
5. All reimbursement of hospitalisation claims shall be supported by Clinical, Radiological, Histopathological and laboratory and surgical evidence (conducted in house or outside the Hospital as per the prescription/written advice of the hospital) wherever applicable along with the discharge certificate from the Hospital.
6. The cost of pre Hospitalisation tests shall be considered provided they lead to hospitalisation. However, this will be considered within the overall eligibility of Rs 25,000.
7. However as an incentive it has been decided to reimburse a sum not exceeding Rs 5,000 for day care procedures like CT scan, MRI scan etc as permitted by the Insurance companies. However for Cataract procedures the amount reimbursable shall be limited to Rs 15,000 or the balance remaining after the claim from Insurance companies / AIUCBOF Welfare Trust is settled, whichever is lower.
8. Another incentive for only for JRS members is that a sum not exceeding Rs 1,500 shall be reimbursed from the JRS Interest funds in addition to Rs 1,500 being reimbursed to the Medical reimbursement for Diagnostic tests once in a financial year.
9. The cost of Ambulance shall be considered only if the cost is within the total limit of Rs 25,000.
10. The Trust may consider, in its sole discretion to release a sum not exceeding 50% of the amount of Limit or expected claim (whichever is lower) as an advance payment in special circumstances.
11. In case the Trust receives more than one claim at one point of time, the Trust may reimburse only a part of the claim made by the member(s) due to insufficiency of funds or for equitable reimburse of available funds amongst the claimants.

Administration of the Scheme:

1. The Scheme shall be administered by the Trustees themselves or by a Committee duly appointed by them to administer the Scheme. The decision of the Trust in the matter of Settlement of reimbursement of hospitalisation claims shall be final.
2. The reimbursement of expenses is subject to availability of funds as on the date of the Claim.
3. The claims shall be considered on first come first served basis.
4. The Trust reserves the right to reject any claim in case the claim is found to be arising out of misrepresentation.

Exclusions:

1. The cost of domiciliary treatment expenses, plastic surgery for beautification shall not be reimbursed by the Trust.

Rights of the Trust:

1. The Trust reserves the right to change, modify, withdraw, abrogate any rules and conditions above mentioned.
2. The Trust also reserves the right to evolve any Scheme that may be beneficial to the members of the Trust as and when required.
3. The Trust reserves its right to seek additional funds from the members of the UCOBank Retirees‘ Association over a period of time to enable the Trust to improve its Corpus or to increase the amount of reimbursement or to evolve new Schemes that will be beneficial to its members.
4. The Trust may, from time to time, accept donations into the Scheme by members, donors, well wishers etc., and to issue proper receipts therefor to ensure building up the Corpus.

A new Fund titled VISHESHA SWASTHYA RAKSHA NIDHI has been set up under UCO Bank Retirees’ Welfare Trust from the auspicious day of Chandramana Ugadi (i.e.8th April 2016). The setting up of the new Fund Scheme has been ratified by the Board of Trustees of UCO Bank Retirees’ Welfare Trust in its meeting held on 13-04-2016.

The objective of the Fund is to provide substantial lump sum fund assistance to members who may fall sick and are diagnosed as having contacted any of the Critical Illnesses, the treatment for which will involve long duration of hospitalization including long period of stay in ICUs and long duration domiciliary treatment involving engaging of full time attendants, frequent visits by physicians, requirement of Physiotherapy etc., besides incurring huge cost of medicines.

The expenses in such cases are very huge and members and their family experience extreme hardship in meeting the cost of treatment, despite having sizeable health insurance to some extent. In many cases, even the lifetime savings of the members’ family are depleted to large extent in meeting treatment cost.

We, as office bearers of the Retirees’ Association, have visited in the past members or their spouses in the hospital / residence, who were in such situation and experiencing extreme hardship and have felt that we need to do something to assist the members with some financial assistance to defray the cost of treatment to some extent at least as a token of our moral support.

Recently, when we visited a member and his family who are in a similar situation, we felt that we need to help out our comrades and lend our support as a gesture of our moral and emotional support to them. We earnestly hope that it will in some way mitigate the pain and hardship of the members and their families.

When we put up this in our what’s App group, there was an overwhelming response from a large number of members by SMS and over phone, some even offering to contribute substantial sum. Encouraged by this response, we thought of properly organizing the collection of contributions from individual members and even from outsiders, who wish to contribute, and hand over the collected amount in one lump sum to the affected member or his/her family.

Members are aware that United India Insurance Company has signed an agreement with IBA for Health Insurance Policy for the erstwhile Officer cadre for Rs 4.00 lakhs and Rs 3.00 Lakhs for erstwhile Award staff. In the original proposal, the Insurance Company had included coverage for all hospitalisation as well as domiciliary treatment reimbursement for Retired employees. However the Company has since withdrawn these facilities and the matter is under dispute with the Company and IBA. In view of this, irrespective of whatever might be the outcome of the negotiations between IBA and the Insurance company in this regard, our Trust is of the opinion that we need to create a fund, where we can provide substantial lump sum fund assistance to our needy members.

We are of the opinion that often the family members of suffering member may hesitate to accept funds raised from individuals as they may think this may amount to fund raising and create some obligation on them. Hence, we decided to create the above Fund under UCO Bank Retirees’ Welfare Trust, which will handle the task of collection of funds from individual members and disbursement to the needy members in one lump sum. The VISHESHA SWASTHYA RAKSHA NIDHI will be designed to effectively function as a pipeline to channelise the individual contributions and reaching the same to the needy persons.

It is proposed that the Fund will have ready funds available, which will be periodically collected from members, to be disbursed as and when situation arises for offering assistance to needy members, instead of raising funds through appeals each time such occasion arises. The family members of the affected members also may not hesitate to accept the assistance when it is released from Welfare Trust Fund of the Association of which the patient / spouse is also a member.

The modalities of functioning of the VISHESHA SWASTHYA RAKSHA NIDHI are being worked out. The detailed scheme will be intimated to members in due course. Broadly, the Fund will be structured with the following features:

The Fund will be financed through donations from members. Members may contribute to the fund any time during the year subject to a minimum contribution of Rs. 500 each time. However, members may donate any amount above Rs 500/- and any number of times during the year. We appeal to all members to donate at least once in a year. The account number of the Fund is furnished below to facilitate direct credit to account by the donating member

The amounts collected will be kept in a separate Savings Bank account opened at UCO Bank, Jayanagar. Details of account are given below. Since, we are only channelising the individual contributions from members to the needy member or his/her spouse; we have no intention of building a Corpus Fund as of now. When any need arises, appropriate amount will be released from the Savings Bank account balance directly to the needy member. The actual commencement of disbursal of funds to the needy members under the Scheme will commence once the fund collects a minimum of Rs.1,00,000/- in the designated account.

Member under treatment for critical illness need not submit any application to the Trust for assistance. On receiving information about the affected member from member himself/herself, their family members or even outsiders like friends etc, the office bears of Association/ Trust will visit the affected member at hospital/residence and obtain details about the illness, treatments being received, duration of stay/domiciliary treatment, cost of medicines etc from member/ family members or/ and the hospital authorities, if necessary.

For a definition of what may be considered as Critical Illness, the Board of Trustees will rely on a list of Critical Illnesses mentioned in Critical Illness Health Policy of any reputed Health Insurance Company. The list will be only indicative and the Board of Trustees may, at its discretion, consider other medical complications also, which require long duration hospitalization including long stay at ICUs and long duration domiciliary treatment that may also involve huge cost of medicines.

With regard to the quantum of assistance to be released to the needy member, the Board of Trustees will decide after giving due consideration to the nature of the critical illness, duration of hospitalization/ICU stay, cost domiciliary treatment, frequent visits to hospital/labs for checkup, cost of medicines, financial hardship being experienced by the family to meet above expenses etc. The decision of the Board of Trustees will be final in deciding the amount of assistance to be released.

As the objective of the Fund is to give substantial one time assistance to any needy member, the quantum of assistance to any needy member will be at least Rs. 25,000, depending upon various factors having been given due consideration as mentioned above and is subject to availability of funds in the designated account.

The above assistance will be apart from other benefits already being availed by the member under the twin schemes namely, Medical Reimbursement Scheme for Diagnostic and Pathological Lab expenses (at present Rs.1,500 per year), reimbursement of hospitalisation expenses and other benefits under Jeevan Raksha Scheme (Rs.15,000 with effect from 1st April 2016) and any other schemes that the Board of Trustees may implement in the future for the benefit of members.

The quantum of minimum Contribution / Donation of Rs. 500/- per member per year fixed by us is quite reasonable and we are sure members will rise to the occasion to come forward to donate higher amounts for this just cause.

Members may send in their contributions by Cheques / Drafts made in favour of “UCO BANK RETIREES’ WELFARE TRUST- A/c VSRN” or credit the amounts directly to the Fund’s account at UCO Bank Jayanagar Branch, Bangalore-560011. The account number of the Fund is 06230110021514 (IFSCode: UCBA0000623).

We note with great pride and satisfaction that our members have reposed complete faith in our Trust for initiating the Hospitalization / Medical Aid Scheme. Members are aware that out Jeevan Raksha Scheme has a membership of over 100 as of 31st March 2016. Many members have expressed their desire to subscribe to the Scheme. From the response that we are receiving, we are confident that our Trust will be able to reach a membership of 150 during 2016-2017

We expect that all members will positively respond to the appeal for contribution to this new Fund also and live upto the motto of our organization being “One for All and All for One”.