NICU - Insurance in Dubai Part 1

NICU stay is very costly and insurance usually has a limit. Billing structure is super confusing and the hospital was unable to provide us a total cost. We had no clue how much it would cost us on the day of discharge. Not fun!

NICU team assigns a grade depending on your baby's situation and sends it to accounting team. Each grade has a package with a total cost. If your insurance approves that, it means you are good to go. Any procedure, surgery, or treatment that is not included within that package comes on top. You really need to be closely in touch with the accounting team to make sure approvals are in place and take a look at the items which are not covered. For example, human milk fortifiers are not covered by insurance, which we were never told. Noone in the NICU informs you as it is not their job. Noone from Finance does not let you know either even though it is their job. There is a missing link between the finance team and the patient. So, you really need to be on top of it yourself to avoid any confusion on the day of discharge, which is supposed to be your happy day.

Billing, on the other hand, works completely different from the package approval. Hospital has to do daily billing, which has nothing to do with what you are charged during your stay. For example, if I were to review my up to date bill at the end of the first week, we were already 50% down the limit. So the calculation does not work proportionally. (we stayed 8 weeks and did not pay 8 times the amount we were billed in the first week.) First week billing was the highest ever indeed and increased slowly thereafter especially once she was off the H2N2 (Nasal oxygen flow).

We went to the bottom of it to avoid any confusion that might have occured and figured it out eventually but it took us some time and energy.

Click to read more about billing and costs