Ayushman Bharat 2.0 is all set to be rolled out on October 1. The new health insurance scheme for the poor would add over 200 packages and offer a larger variety of better quality implants in cardiology and orthopaedics.
Recently, the nodal agency for implementation of the flagship programme National Health Authority (NHA) has approved Ayushman Bharat 2.0. The new scheme has aligned its cancer care with the National Cancer Grid of Tata Memorial Hospital.
Till now, the cancer care provided by hospitals was dependent on the affected part of cancer. From now on, cancer care would depend on the type of drug regimen being prescribed. The protocols used by the premier Tata Memorial hospital would be available across healthcare institutions to the poor. According to a source, cancer care packages were not being used as much as we would have liked. With the implementation of Ayushman Bharat 2.0, this will change. After the approval of the governing board, the packages would be further tweaked and then sent for upload on the IT platform.
The most important step in the scheme would be the rationalisation of the mission cost. About 200 new packages offering better treatment will be added under Ayushman Bharat.
“There were packages not available under Ayushman Bharat. So, these would be offered as unspecified packages and the hospitals were free to ask whopping amounts as reimbursements. In the review exercise, we identified the most used packages and put them under Ayushman Bharat specifying their costs. This would help in pruning the mission cost,” said an official.
So far, a private hospital was reimbursed a lumpsum package amount for any implant surgery. Now, the package would separately specify the cost of the surgery and the implant. This would help the patient get good quality implants and help in checking the tendency of hospitals to use any cheap implant and claim the entire package cost.
An expert committee headed by Niti Aayog member Prof Vinod K Paul was formed to review the cost of 1,300 medical packages under Ayushman Bharat and carry out the entire process. The committee reviewed the medical packages which decided the amount the Centre reimbursed the hospitals for treating patients and Ayushman Bharat beneficiaries. This had been a long-standing demand of hospitals and medical practitioners since the scheme was launched in September 2018.

Source: The Economic Times.

   Send article as PDF