'Free treatment worth Rs 61,501 cr provided under AB PM-JAY scheme till date'

NEW DELHI: The Centre's ambitious Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (ABPM-JAY) has achieved a milestone of 5 crore hospital admissions amounting to Rs 61,501 crore worth free treatment of people.

The flagship scheme being implemented by the National Health Authority (NHA) provides a health cover of Rs 5 lakh per family per year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalisation to 12 crore beneficiary families.

"AB PM-JAY was launched with the vision to achieve universal health coverage. Currently, in its fifth year of implementation, the scheme is helping crores of beneficiaries from poor and vulnerable families by reducing the out-of-pocket expenditure for medical treatments. Consistent efforts have helped achieve several milestones for PM-JAY in the current year," NHA said.

"From issuing 9.28 crore Ayushman cards to scheme beneficiaries to achieving 100 per cent allocated fund utilisation and authorisation of 1.65 crore hospital admissions, the year 2022-23 has been full of accomplishments for the scheme," he said.

The ABPM-JAY is being implemented in 33 states and Union Territories (UTs) except for Delhi, Odisha and West Bengal.

Till date, 23.39 crore beneficiaries have been verified and issued Ayushman cards for availing free treatment under the scheme. Under ABPM-JAY, the beneficiaries are issued co-branded PVC Ayushman cards, a health ministry statement said.

The PM-JAY empanelled hospital network consists of 28,351 hospitals (including 12,824 private hospitals) across the country, it stated.

During the year 2022-23, approximately 56 per cent of the total admissions (by amount) have been authorised in private hospitals, while 44 per cent of the admissions have been authorised in public hospitals.

The AB PM-JAY beneficiaries can avail treatment corresponding to a total of 1,949 procedures under 27 different specialties. The top tertiary care specialities under which treatments has been availed by beneficiaries till date are medical oncology (cancer treatment), emergency care, orthopaedic and urology (kidney-related ailments).

The scheme has achieved a milestone of 5 crore hospital admissions amounting to Rs 61,501 crore worth free treatment of people, it said.

Further, under the scheme, a conscious effort has been made to ensure gender equity in access to quality healthcare.

As a result of the conducive policies, approximately 49 per cent of Ayushman card recipients are women and over 48 per cent of total authorised hospital admissions under AB PM-JAY scheme have been availed by women, the statement said.

Also, over 141 medical procedures under PM-JAY are exclusively earmarked for women, it added.