On 13th August 2020, The Governing board of National Health Authority(NHA) approved the proposal to integrate the existing health schemes of the central ministries with the Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY) for employees, during the governing board’s review meeting on the implementation AB-PMJAY chaired by Harsh Vardhan, Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare.
Key People:
Amitabh Kant, CEO of NITI Aayog, Rajesh Bhushan, Union Health Secretary, Sanjay Prasad, Joint Secretary Department of Expenditure, Indu Bhushan, CEO of NHA and other board members participated in the meeting.
Benefits:
i.The integration of the central ministry schemes and AB-PMJAY will promote the development in the supply side and enhance the demand creation of the services of the health care.
ii.The Integration of the existing schemes with the ABPMJAY for employees will benefit the government and contractual employees, beneficiary groups like, building and construction workers, manual scavengers, road accident victims and Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) personnels.
iii.This will increase the interoperability between the scheme and will benefit the victims in different geographical areas with limited health care amenities through the portability characteristic of PMJAY.
About AB-PMJAY:
The central government’s flagship initiative to provide insurance cover upto Rs. 5 lakhs per family per year, Secondary and tertiary care hospitalization to around 10.74 crore poor and vulnerable people.
Key Points:
i.The NHA has developed the state of the art IT platform to combine the central heath schemes with AB-PMJAY and to provide uninterrupted supply of health care providers.
ii.This will ensure the implementation of the schemes and leverage the potential of the integrated data system.
iii.NHA also built the capacity to administer cashless health insurance service in around 23,000 public and private hospitals in rural and urban areas across India.
Other approvals:
i.The Governing board of NHA gave an approval to conduct insurance pilots to cover the middle and non-poor population which includes informal sector workers, self-employed, professional and MSME employees who are in different occupations, locations and income divisions.
ii.This will provide an understanding on the complexities of the self-pay covers on a voluntary basis to the people in informal sectors.
iii.NHA also approved the 2.0 version of the Information Security policy, which is revised once a year, to establish control to prepare better auditing and compliance requirements and a penalty clause was included to provide a solid strategy for effective communication and enforcement of the policy.
Recent Related News:
i.Centre has approved a Rs 50 lakh medical insurance scheme for healthcare workers who are dealing with coronavirus pandemic.
ii.Centre sanctions Rs 190 cr for augmentation of healthcare facilities in North Eastern States.
About National Health Authority NHA:
CEO– Indu Bhushan (CEO of AB-PMJAY)
Headquarters– New Delhi
