​The Secretariat-General of the Cooperative Health Insurance Council has launched a questionnaire on the electronic portal of the Council , aiming at surveying the opinions of all relevant parties (insured, health-care service providers, health insurance companies, and those interested and specialized in health insurance) on the possibility of including additional benefits in order to develop the benefits of the mandatory insurance policy approved by the Council in line with  new developments  in health care.
The Secretary-General of the Council, Mr. Muhammad ibn Sulaiman Al-Hussain, stated: “The Secretariat-General periodically, at least every three years, develops and updates the executive bylaws as well as the unified document in order to scale up the level of health insurance services for the insured and the relevant parties. He explained that the Council along with its partners have carried out an extensive examination of the comments and suggestions received by the Secretariat-General on the present document from all concerned parties as well as from experts.
Al-Hussain also indicated that the questionnaire has offered additional benefits such as immunizations for children against Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), coverage of early screening of hearing impairment program, critical congenital heart defects program for all infants, increasing the financial cost limit for treating people with autism spectrum disorders to a maximum of SR 50 thousand Riyals, and coverage of morbid obesity surgeries if the body mass index exceeds 45 (BMI) with a maximum of 20 thousand Riyals to cover the cost of the surgery.
Presenting these additions in the questionnaire is intended to elicit public opinion on the feasibility and advantages of including these newly proposed benefits, if approved, in the coverage plans of the cooperative health insurance policy. Al-Hussain urged those concerned to fill in the questionnaire as it would help to provide information that will make it possible to measure the trends in public opinion on these proposed benefits, especially by the parties of the insurance relationship as they are the target group of the health insurance system.
He pointed out that the approved and applicable health insurance policy in the meantime, covers all expenses of medical examination, medicine, tests and radiographic tests, in addition to the expenses of hospitalization. Moreover, he added that the limit of financial coverage for health insurance policy is 500 thousand Riyals. The financial coverage provides a package of benefits that covers the expenses of treatment and health care as included in the table of benefits in the health insurance policy. He stressed that, in any case, the system does not allow issuing a health insurance policy with less benefits than those stated in the approved policy.
Al-Hussain also called upon the insured to be aware of their insurance rights by reviewing the cooperative health insurance system, the executive bylaws and the unified policy. In addition to this, he recommended that the insured benefit from the communication channels for responding to all inquiries and receiving feedback, suggestions and complaints through one of the following channels: customer care number 920001177, the electronic portal www.cchi.gov.sa, e-mail info@cchi.gov.sa, smart phone applications or the Council official webpages cchi.ksa on social media channels (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn).