Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare, J P Nadda, exchanged the Memorandum of Understanding with the State Health Ministers of 20 States marking their commitment towards the launch of the Ayushman Bharat – National Health Protection Mission (AB-NHPM) at a Health Ministers conclave, in Delhi on Thursday.
Speaking on the occasion the minister said, that AB-NHPM will protect around 50 crore people (from about 10 crore families). “It will be cashless and paperless access to services upto Rs. 5 lakhs per year will be available for the beneficiary families at the point of service in both public and private empanelled hospitals across India.” He further said that the beneficiaries under the scheme can avail services anywhere in India and it is expected to bring a visible relief to the target families by mitigating the financial risk arising out of catastrophic health episodes.
He said that AB-NHPM will protect the people and at the same time Health and Wellness Centres (HWCs) will deliver comprehensive primary health care. “The H&WC would provide preventive, promotive, and curative care for non-communicable diseases, dental, mental, geriatric care, palliative care, etc. He further stated that the Government has initiated universal screening of common NCDs such as diabetes, hypertension and common cancers along with Tuberculosis and Leprosy, which will eventually help in reducing the disease burden of the country.
At this conclave the CEO AB-NHPM, Indu Bhushan gave a detailed presentation and updated the status of the implementation. He urged the States to seek approval and release RFP for insurance company hiring (in case of insurance mode) or Implementation Support Agency (ISA) in case of trust mode implementation. 20 states have so far signed MoU and its likely to be 25 States by the end of this month. During the conclave, model tender documents, final operational guidelines for AB-NHPM were released which are focused on beneficiary centric delivery of services while ensuring there is no compromise on the quality of healthcare services and preventing frauds.
A web portal for initiating the empanelment of hospitals under the mission was also launched. This marks the commencement of the implementation of AB-NHPM and takes the Mission closer to launch. Training / Demo of empanelment software will be conducted in next two weeks and States can operationalize empanelment of hospitals by 1st of July.
