‘Ayushman Bharat’: How It Benefits A large Segment Of Society?

Under the vision of AB-PMJAY, each and every citizen receives his due share of health care. This is the “world’s largest government-funded healthcare program” targeting more than 50 crore beneficiaries.

It is a paradigm shift from a sectorial, segmented and fragmented approach of service delivery through various national and State schemes to a bigger, more comprehensive and better converged and need-based service delivery of secondary and tertiary care.

Benefits Of Scheme

# Ayushman Bharat will provide a cover of up to Rs.5 lakhs per family per year, for secondary and tertiary care hospitalization.

# Over 10.74 crore vulnerable entitled families e. approximately 50 crore beneficiaries, will be eligible for these benefits.

# This scheme will provide cashless and paperless access to services for the beneficiary at the point of service.

# Entitled families will be able to use the quality health services they need without facing financial hardships.

After fully implemented, PMJAY may become the world’s largest fully government-financed health protection scheme.

Features Of The Scheme

Ayushman Bharat adopts a continuum of care approach, comprising of two inter-related components: Creation of 1,50,000 Health and Wellness Centres which will bring health care closer to the homes of the people. These centers will provide Comprehensive Primary Health Care, covering both maternal and child health services and non-communicable diseases, including free essential drugs and diagnostic services.

The second component is the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana which provides health protection cover to poor and vulnerable families for secondary and tertiary care.

The Health and Wellness Centres will play a critical role in creating awareness about PMJAY, screening for non-communicable diseases, follow-up of hospitalization cases among others.

PMJAY primarily targets the poor, deprived rural families and identified an occupational category of urban workers’ families as per the latest Socio-Economic Caste Census data for both rural and urban areas as well as the active families under the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana.

The services will include 1350 procedures covering pre and post hospitalization, diagnostics, medicines etc.

The Yojana beneficiaries will be able to move across borders and access services across the country through the provider network seamlessly.

Pradhan Mantri Aarogya Mitra

The scheme is creating a cadre of certified frontline health service professionals called Pradhan Mantri Aarogya Mitras (PMAMs) who will be a primary point of facilitation for the beneficiaries to avail treatment at the hospital and thus, act as a support system to streamline health service delivery.

A MoU was signed between National Health Agency and Ministry of Skills Development & Entrepreneurship on 27th August this year in New Delhi.

Aarogya Mitra's training is being conducted in collaboration with National Skill Development Corporation and Ministry of Skill Development to strengthen implementation and operational preparedness.

Training has already been conducted in across 20 states and around 3519 Aarogya Mitras have been trained so far. Training programs for State, District and PMAMs have been conducted in 27 states.

A total of around 3936 personnel have been trained at state, district and PMAM levels.

Focused workshops have been organized to train the state level officials in operating the developed IT systems.

Robust measures are being put in place in the IT platform to ensure the privacy and security of the data.