# DataLabs by Plum

> Plum's data journalism on what health conditions cost families in India, from cancer to heart disease, built from de-identified health insurance claims.

- Source: https://www.plumhq.com/datalabs
- Contact: datalabs@plumhq.com

Plum (plumhq.com) is an India-based employee health benefits and insurance platform. Plum Benefits Insurance Brokers Pvt Ltd is an IRDAI-registered direct broker (Life & General), registration no. 897.

## Editions

### [Investigating Heart Disease: The burden, costs, and early risk](https://www.plumhq.com/datalabs/heart-health)

Heart disease in Plum's health insurance claims in India: 9,534 heart-related claims from 7,402 patients, analysed by condition, age, severity and cost.

- In Plum's cohort of 9,534 heart-related health insurance claims from 7,402 patients, the total amount claimed was ₹148.34 crore.
- In Plum's heart-related claims, the median cost of a hospitalisation ranged from ₹38,000 for a mild episode to ₹4.2 lakh for a critical one, and the median hospital stay from 3 days to 12 days.
- In Plum's cost-outlier analysis of 8,941 heart-related claims, 33.5% cost more than twice the median for their condition group (the overall median, for six small groups) and 10.9% cost more than five times that median.

Markdown edition, with the data behind every chart: https://www.plumhq.com/datalabs/heart-health.md

### [The Cost of Cancer: Financial Impact of Cancer Claims](https://www.plumhq.com/datalabs/cancer)

What cancer treatment costs and how much insurance pays: Plum's analysis of 8,102 cancer-related claims across multiple insurers, by cancer type, age and cost.

- In Plum's cohort of 8,102 cancer-related insurance claims across multiple insurers, which includes carcinoma in situ and benign growths such as fibroids, ₹78.0 crore was claimed in total, insurers paid 70.8% of the amount claimed, and patients' out-of-pocket costs came to ₹23.2 crore.
- Of the 2,431 patients in Plum's cancer treatment-intensity analysis, 20.2% (about 1 in 5) had total claimed treatment costs above ₹5 lakh, the edition's figure for a typical annual sum insured, while 39.7% stayed within ₹1.25 lakh.
- In Plum's cancer claims data, the median total amount claimed per patient, before insurance payouts, was ₹7.6 lakh at Treatment Intensity Level III (157 patients) and ₹13.4 lakh at Level IV (14 patients), which the edition equates to 7.6 and 13.4 years of savings for a household that saves ₹1,00,000 a year.

Markdown edition, with the data behind every chart: https://www.plumhq.com/datalabs/cancer.md

## Coming next

- Maternity: DataLabs by Plum's next edition looks at maternity and childbirth through Indian health insurance claims: when families have children, where, and what it costs.

## Data and privacy

DataLabs editions are built from Plum's de-identified health insurance claims (and, for heart health, health checkup results). Names, phone numbers, email addresses, policy numbers and other direct identifiers are removed before analysis. The figures describe Plum's insured cohorts, not the population of India.