Ayushman Bharat Yojana

Ayushman Bharat Yojana

Ayushman Bharat Yojana or Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY) or National Health Protection Scheme is a centrally sponsored scheme launched in 2018, under the Ayushman Bharat Mission of MoHFW in India.

Ayushman Bharat consists of two major elements.

1. National Health Protection Scheme

• Ayushman Bharat-National Health Protection Scheme, which will cover over 10 crore (one hundred million) poor and vulnerable families (approximately 50 crore (five hundred million) beneficiaries) providing coverage up to 5 lakh rupees ($7,100) per family per year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalization.
• Benefits of the scheme are portable across the country and a beneficiary covered under the scheme will be allowed to take cashless benefits from any public or private empaneled hospitals across the country.
• It will be an entitlement based scheme with entitlement decided on the basis of deprivation criteria in the SECC database. It will target about 10.74 crore poor, deprived rural families and identified occupational category of urban workers' families as per the latest Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) data covering both rural and urban.
• One of the core principles of Ayushman Bharat - National Health Protection Mission is to co-operative federalism and flexibility to states.
• For giving policy directions and fostering coordination between Centre and States, it is proposed to set up Ayushman Bharat National Health Protection Mission Council (AB-NHPMC) at apex level Chaired by Union Health and Family Welfare Minister. States would need to have State Health Agency (SHA) to implement the scheme.
• Covering almost all secondary and many tertiary hospitalizations (except a negative list).

2. Wellness centres

Rs 1200 crore ($170 million) allocated for 1.5 lakh (150,000) health and wellness centres,Under this 1.5 lakh centres will be setup to provide comprehensive health care,including for non-communicable diseases and maternal and child health services, apart from free essential drugs and diagnostic services. The government will upgrade existing Public Health Centres to Wellness Centres. The welfare scheme has been rolled out on August 15, 2018. Further, Contribution of private sector through CSR and philanthropic institutions in adopting these centres is also envisaged. The list of Services to be provided at Health & Wellness Centre include:

• Pregnancy care and maternal health services
• Neonatal and infant health services
• Child health
• Chronic communicable diseases
• Non-communicable diseases
• Management of mental illness
• Dental care
• Geriatric care emergency medicine