Employees who are registered under the Employee Provident Fund (EPF) scheme are now eligible to withdraw an amount up to Rs one lakh as medical advance. The employees do not have to give an estimate of the pay to the hospital as well before withdrawing the amount.
A circular released by the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) stated that the facility is available to employees covered under the Central Services Medical Attendant (CS(MA)) rules and the Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS).
The circular also state, “In life-threatening diseases, many times it becomes imperative to get the patient immediately admitted in hospital on emergency to save his/her life and it is not possible to get the estimate from hospital in such situations. A need is felt for streamlining the advance facility for such serious in-patient’s treatment in hospital whenever family members of employees are not able to manage estimate from hospital concerned in which such patient has been admitted in emergency. Sometimes patient employee maybe in ICU where estimate is not known in advance. Hence the following procedure may be adpted to grant medical advance for emergency hospitalisation on account of serious life threatening illness including Covid.”
Here’s a guide on how to avail this service:
- The patient should be admitted to a Government/PSU/CGHS hospital as per the rules. In case the patient is admitted to a private hospital then the hospital can appeal to the authorities to gran relaxations regarding medical bills and provide reimbursement.
- The employee or their family needs to submit a letter to the authorities claiming advance. They need not write the estimate in the letter.
- The advance can be given to the family of the patient or it can be directly submitted to the particular hospital where the patient is admitted.
- In case the treatment exceeds the one lakh limit, one can avail more advance but in this case, one has to provide the estimated cost by the hospital.
- The medical bills need to be submitted within 45 days of the discharge of the patient.
What are the conditions of withdrawal of EPFO?
You can withdraw money that is at least six months’ basic wages and dearness allowance.
