Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious public health insurance scheme, Ayushman Bharat Yojana, is set for a reboot to attract more private hospitals to get empanelled to the scheme. The scheme has been revised to provide several incentives to the hospitals, which currently includes 13,470 public hospitals and 9361 private hospitals.
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As per the Chief Executive Officer of the National Health Authority (NHA), RS Sharma, the reimbursement time of the expenditure of the hospitals will be reduced from 15 days to 10 days under the revised scheme. The NHA is the implementing authority of Ayushman Bharat Yojana or Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY), which provides an annual health cover of Rs 5 lakh per family to 10 crore beneficiary families.
Sharma added that the revised scheme will disburse half of the claims raised by the empanelled hospitals with no history of fraud as soon as the request is submitted. He also said that if the extra claim amount has been disbursed in advance, it will be adjusted with the claims submitted in the coming month.
With the reboot, the NHA aims to bring more private hospitals on board the Ayushman Bharat scheme so that a balance between the demand and the supply of the healthcare services is maintained.
Previously in October 2021, the NHA had added the new black fungus management package to the scheme. It also revised the rates of about 400 medical procedures so that the empanelled hospitals can provide better services.
The NHA is also deeply focused on identifying more beneficiaries of the Ayushman Bharat Yojana so that PM Modi’s vision of providing free health insurance to more than 50 crore poor and vulnerable people is achieved.
Sharma said that they are now issuing an e-card to each beneficiary of the PM-JAY scheme as opposed to issuing one card per beneficiary family earlier. He believes it will help patients to avail faster hospital admissions during an emergency and will also make each beneficiary feel empowered.
At present, more than 16 crore cards have been issued since the launch of the Ayushman Bharat Yojana on 23 September 2018 as per the official website of PM-JAY. It comprises of over 10 crore PM-JAY cards and over 5.8 crore state cards.