ICICI Bank and CARE Hospital, Hyderabad, have jointly launched Heartline, a credit facility for patients undergoing angioplasty at CARE Hospitals. The loan facility is extended to patients who need drug-coated stents for surgery.

The imported drug-coated stents cost around Rs 1.5 lakh and charges for the entire procedure, including hospitalisation, comes to Rs 2.5 lakh to Rs 3 lakh. The bank would provide loans up to Rs 3 lakh at 12 per cent interest. Announcing the unique features of Heartline, Dr Soma Raju, Chairman of CARE Hospitals, said this was for the first time that a financial institution had directly come forward with assistance in a healthcare programme. Though insurance and reimbursement facilities were available, they covered only a miniscule section of the patients.

Since very few patients could afford this surgery, Heartline would become a boon for patients without insurance cover or reimbursement options. According to Dr Soma Raju, the hospital would issue a certificate about the need for using a drug-coated stent and the cost involved. The patients can approach the ICICI Bank located on the premises of the hospital at Nampally for the loan.

The Bank would process the application and sanction the loan within five working days. Businessmen and self-employed people would have to submit details of their income-tax returns together with a surety, while the salaried people would have to present the salary slips along with a surety. The sanctioning of the loan depends on the amount asked for and the repaying capacity of the patients or their relatives. It would be a direct deal between the bank and the patients and the hospital would not be involved in any manner. The loan could be repaid either in monthly instalments or in any other customised form, according to a spokesman of the bank.

Dr Soma Raju said, "In normal case, the tests and diagnosis take four to five days and by the time the treatment begins the loan will be sanctioned. However, in emergency cases, the treatment would start immediately and no patient would have to wait till the loan amount is sanctioned. The scheme would be applicable to all CARE Hospitals, namely Nampally and Banjara Hills in Hyderabad, and Visakhapatnam and Bhubaneswar.

Dr Soma Raju said hundreds of patients were making use of the free consultation service started in the hospital on Sundays between 9 am and 12 pm and a discount of 50 per cent on investigations.

According to Dr Sunil Kapoor, Senior Interventional Cardiologist and Chief of Cath Labs, CARE Hospitals, every 10 seconds somewhere somebody is having a heart attack in India. This has become an epidemic now. He said the hospital was using the Kalm-Raju stent developed by CARE, which would cost about Rs 5,000 and the entire operation about Rs 45,000 to Rs 50,000. The drug-coated stents, presently imported from the US, would help prevent re-narrowing or re-clogging of the arteries following angioplasty and stenting.

He said drug-coated stents were the most advanced form of angioplasty with less than one per cent chances of re-narrowing of arteries. The hospital was conducting six to seven angioplasty operations every month using stents. The ICICI-CARE Heartline programme would enable several patients to go in for the latest world-class facilities available in the hospital, he said.