Over 1.26 Crore Hospital Admission Have Been Authorised Under Ayushman Bharat -Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PMJAY)
By Nmami Life Editorial 26-Dec 2020 Reading Time: 6 Mins
Harsh Vardhan the Union Health Minister said on Tuesday about the Ayushman Bharat scheme that it has provided absolute free treatments to over 1.26 crore people since the launch of the scheme.
“Around 23k hospitals are impaneled so far and over 12.5 crore e-cards are issued,” a health ministry statement said. Apart from that, 57 percent of the whole amount utilised under the Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY) has been for tertiary procedures related to treatment of major illnesses like cardiac ailments, cancer, neonatal, and orthopaedic problems, Harsh
said as he conducted the ‘Aarogya Manthan’ 2.0 celebrating the second anniversary of AB-PMJAY.
Harsh conceded that over 45 percent of the impaneled hospitals are giving private facilities to over 52 percent of the general treatments and raising 61 percent of the hospital admissions claims amount.
As the “world’s largest public-supported health assurance scheme”, it provides financial risk protection to over 53 crore Indians from socially and economically disadvantaged backgrounds by assuring them with a health cover of ₹5 lakh per eligible Indian family once a year to help cashless inpatient tertiary and secondary healthcare.
The statement further said, “AB-PMJAY has spared treatments worth ₹15.5 crore. It has also saved crores of households and lives from getting exhausted thanks to catastrophic expenditure on health that pushed an estimated 6 crore families below the poverty level annually.”
Nearly half the beneficiaries are ladies and girls. Vardhan also added that in these two years, the scheme has spared free treatment to 1.26 crore beneficiaries. He also outlined the scheme’s portability together with its magnificent features.
“An eligible patient from any state executing PMJAY can help with cashless treatment anywhere around India, in any impaneled hospital. Portability has been built into the design of the scheme and enabled 1.3 lakh people of the migrant population to avail of care at the closest hospital,” Harsh Vardhan quoted.
He further added that PMJAY’s capability in building approach would go a long way in making Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dream of Atmanirbhar Bharat a fidelity. He also congratulated the 32 states and union territory governments who have been committed to the scheme. Harsh Vardhan distributed awards to the winners of AB-PMJAY start-up grand challenge to support the implementation of PMJAY along with the seven implementation challenges like minimising abuse and fraud control, beneficiary empowerment, increasing care quality, and hence, help transform health care delivery to the poorest citizens of the country.
Harsh Vardhan also launched the AB-PMJAY Joint Certification Programme. Talking of the programme, he stated, “I am assertive that this promising programme will develop the knowledge and skills of relevant stakeholders in medical audit and insurance for efficient and accurate processing of prevention and claims and detection of abuse and fraud”.
The Union Minister also released the “AB-PMJAY Anti-Fraud Framework : The Practitioners’ Guidebook”. This may work as a useful gizmo for the states because it can be a repository of the anti-fraud guidelines, techniques,
advisories alongside legal course/remedies of action presently available under applicable Indian laws, the statement mentioned.
This guidebook will work as a superb instrument for capacity-building for the state health agencies to need effective measures for deterrence prevention, and detection of fraud under AB-PMJAY, he stated. “The focus this year is to extend the reach of the PMJAY services and network to other left-out population groups like truck drivers, road traffic victims, manual scavengers, among others through convergence with other central health schemes”, Harsh Vardhan noted.
Over to you
Along with the recently-launched National Digital Health Mission, which can build the specified digital health ecosystem to enable enhanced access to safe, quality, timely and affordable healthcare for 1.3 billion Indian citizens, Ayushman Bharat can become a pillar of the country’s healthcare system.