Rs1 lakh crore disbursed for free hospital care to 7.4 crore patients under PMJAY scheme

New Delhi, Aug 17 (IANS) A total of 7.37 crore hospital admissions worth Rs 1 lakh crore have been authorised under the Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY) as of June 30, 2024, according to the latest data compiled by the Ministry of Health.

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).

Beneficiaries eligible under the scheme can create their Ayushman card at any time throughout the year.

Eligible beneficiaries can either create the card themselves using Ayushman App or visit the nearest CSC or empanelled hospital to create their Ayushman card.

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 per cent of India’s population, according to official data.

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.

The top speciality care treatments availed by beneficiaries to date are general medicine, infectious diseases, general surgery, medical oncology, ophthalmology and orthopaedics, according to the Health Ministry.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, Oncology, etc.

Among the procedures availed by the people, are hemodialysis, screening for Covid-19, multiple packages and acute febrile illness.

The allocations for the PMJAY scheme in the Budget for 2024-25 allocation has been increased by 10 per cent to ?7,300 crore from the revised estimate of ?6,800 crore in 2023-24.Overall the allocation to the Health Ministry in the budget has been raised by 12.96 per cent 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 is aimed at reducing the cost of treatment for cancer patients.