Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the nationwide scheme ‘Ayushman Bharat’ on September 23, 2018.

What is Ayushman Bharat?

The Ayushman Bharat is a scheme that aims to provide health assurance to 10 crore families or around 50 crore Indians, who will be given up to Rs 5 lakh cover per year.

The scheme targets the poor, deprived rural families and identifies an occupational category of urban workers’ families, 8.03 crore in rural and 2.33 crore in urban areas, as per the latest Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) data.

The health ministry has included 1,354 packages in the scheme under which treatment for coronary bypass, knee replacements and stenting among others would be provided at 15-20 per cent cheaper rates than the Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS).

The scheme will provide cashless and paperless access to services for the beneficiary at the point of service. Eligible people can avail the benefits in government and listed private hospitals.

Who can avail and how?

The entitlement is being decided on the basis of deprivation criteria in the SECC database. The beneficiaries are identified based on the deprivation categories (D1, D2, D3, D4, D5, and D7). For the urban areas, the 11 occupational criteria will determine entitlement.

In addition, the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna (RSBY) beneficiaries in states where it is active are also included.

There is no cap on family size and age in the scheme.

In case of hospitalisation, members of the beneficiary families do not need to pay anything under the scheme, provided one goes to a government or an empanelled private hospital.

The National Health Agency (NHA), the apex body implementing the AB-NHPM, has launched a website (mera.pmjay.gov.in) and a helpline number(14555).

Each empanelled hospital will have an ‘Ayushman Mitra help desk’ where a prospective beneficiary can check documents to verify the eligibility and enrolment to the scheme.

All the beneficiaries will be given letters having QR codes which will be scanned and a demographic authentication conducted for identification and to verify his or her eligibility to avail the benefits of the scheme.

J K Hospital, Bhopal is registered as beneficiaries of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Ayushman Bharat’ scheme.