New Delhi: More than 5.5 lakh patients have availed of the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY), often known as the Ayushman Bharat scheme, within a period three months of its launch.
The Union and state governments have handled reimbursement claims worth Rs 548 crore in this period. This comes to Rs 6 crore being spent per day on roughly 6,111 patients ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the scheme on 23 September.
These numbers are likely to cross 12,000 patients per day within a month, by the end of January 2019. The number of total patients, who would have availed of the scheme, will touch more than 7.5 lakh by the end of this year, 2018, official sources stated.
“This is still incomplete data as data integration from some of the states is still being done. The response to this scheme has been much more than what we had expected. This huge number also shows the immense need for medical coverage for the poor, which was missing until now. This is just the beginning. Once it is fully operational, it will help crores of poor families in mitigating the financial losses that they have to bear in case of diseases,” said a senior officer with the Ministry of Health.
Under the scheme, the government provides a coverage of Rs 5 lakh per family annually, benefiting more than 10.74 crore poor families for secondary and tertiary care hospitalisation through a network of Empanelled Health Care Providers (EHCP). There is no cap on family size and age in the scheme, ensuring that nobody is left out.
“By mid-December, more than 5.52 lakh patients have already used this scheme. As more and more hospitals get empanelled and information about this scheme reaches more people, the number of people using this scheme will increase. The real effect of it will be visible in the coming four-five months,” he added.
According to him, the government has enacted comprehensive guidelines to make sure that fraud of any kind including ghost patients availing the scheme does not take place.
As per the Ministry of Health, the states of Odisha, Telangana and the union territory of Delhi have still not signed the memorandum of understanding for implementing PMJAY, while the states of Meghalaya, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab and Kerala have signed the MoU for implementation of PMJAY but are yet to launch it.
The scheme, as per officials, cover around 1,350 disorders, diseases that include ailments related to cardiology, cardio-vascular surgery, cardio-thoracic surgery, ophthalmology, ENT, orthopaedics, urology, obstetrics, gynaecology, general surgery, neurosurgery, neuroradiology, plastic reconstruction, burns management, oral and maxillofacial surgery, paediatric medical management, neo-natal, paediatric cancer, oncology and mental disorders packages.
As per data shared by the Ministry, more than 15,000 hospitals have been empanelled for the scheme, with more than 55% of them being private hospitals that have treated around 65% of the patients.