New Delhi: As of June 30, 2024, the Ministry of Health’s most recent data shows that 7.37 crore free hospital care admissions valued at Rs 1 lakh crore had been approved under the Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY).
The scheme has been implemented in 33 states/UTs.
The leading states in which Ayushman cards have been created under the PMJAY scheme include Madhya Pradesh with 402.5 lakh cards, Maharashtra (280 lakh), Karnataka (171.5 lakh) Jammu and Kashmir (85.9 lakh), Telangana (82.5 lakh), Tamil Nadu (73.6 lakh) and Meghalaya (19.76 lakh).
Those who meet the program’s eligibility requirements can create their Ayushman cards whenever they choose throughout the year.
Eligible beneficiaries can either create the card themselves using the Ayushman App or visit the nearest CSC or empanelled hospital to make their Ayushman Card.
Also read – Do not Enroll Non Muslim students in Madarsas MP Government
According to official data, AB-PMJAY aims to provide health cover of Rs 5 lakh per family per year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalisation to approximately 55 crore beneficiaries, corresponding to 12.34 crore families constituting the bottom 40 percent of India’s population.
Eligible beneficiaries can avail of cashless and paperless healthcare services related to hospitalisation across more than 29,000 empanelled hospitals in the country.
The cashless treatment covers all the costs related to treatment, medicines, supplies, diagnostic services, physician’s fees, room charges, surgeon charges, OT & ICU charges etc.
According to the Health Ministry, the top speciality care treatments beneficiaries have availed themselves of to date are general medicine, infectious diseases, general surgery, medical oncology, ophthalmology, and orthopaedics.
In the latest national master of the Health Benefit Package (HBP), the scheme provides cashless healthcare services related to 1,949 procedures across 27 medical specialties, including General Medicine, Surgery, Cardiology, and Oncology.
Among the procedures people avail themselves of are hemodialysis, screening for COVID-19, multiple packages, and acute febrile illness.
The allocation for the PMJAY scheme in Budget 2024 25 has been increased by 10 percent to ₹7,300 crores from the revised estimate of ₹6,800 crores in 2023-24.
Overall,, the budget allocation to the Health Ministry has been raised by 12.96 percent to ₹90,958.63 crore, compared to ₹80,517.62 crore in the revised estimate for 2023-24.
As part of the healthcare package in the Budget, the government has also announced customs duty exemptions on three cancer treatment drugs: Trastuzumab Deruxtecan, Osimertinib, and Durvalumab. The move aims to reduce the cost of treatment for cancer patients.
For more updates Subscribe to Media Eye News
–IANS
