CS chairs 5th Governing Council Meeting of Ayushman Bharat

Jammu, Sep 16: Chief Secretary, Dr Arun Kumar Mehta Friday chaired the 5th Governing Council Meeting of State Health Agency (SHA) and also reviewed its performance regarding the implementation of Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY)/AB-PMJAY Sehat here in the UT.
The meeting was attended by Additional Chief Secretary, Finance; Commissioner Secretary, Labour and Employment; Secretary, Health; Secretary, IT; Principals of Medical Colleges, Srinagar/Jammu; Directors of Health Kashmir/Jammu, Nodal Officer, SHA; SGNO, SHA; and other officers of the concerned Departments.
Jammu based officers participated in the meeting through video conferencing.
Dr Mehta impressed upon the officers to ensure that each person is facilitated to obtain the available benefits. He asked them to work for registering each person under the scheme so that the end person receives free medical care as envisaged under the scheme.
The Chief Secretary also emphasized upon the health authorities to work towards creating health history of the patients starting from those of students in our schools. He urged them to make it convenient for every person to register for the scheme at his doorsteps. He maintained that the scheme should be saturated fully in both urban and rural areas.
He exhorted upon them to conduct the Governing body meetings quarterly for timely confirmation of intervening decisions taken during this period. He made out that both audit and accounting of the scheme should be strengthened at every level for maintaining transparency in the effective implementation of this welfare scheme.
Dr Mehta advised the health agency to study the claims of other state to make the scheme more sustainable and promising for the beneficiaries. He asked them to work out the best sustainable model in consultation with different stakeholders for extending maximum benefit to the needy patients of the UT.
The ACS, Finance made out that the administration did best to extend the health benefits uninterruptedly to the people. He reiterated that it is the endeavour of the administration to devise policy that is in the best interest of people.
In this meeting the Council gave approval to SHA for introducing ‘e-RUPI Concept’as a pilot project in selected Tertiary Care hospitals in the UT. It was given out that the primary objective of using e-RUPI is reducing out-of-pocket expenditures (OOPE) borne by the beneficiaries on diagnostic tests not performed in these government run health facilities.
The meeting was informed that among the 196149 received claims amounting to Rs 353.74 crores, 147180 claims amounting to Rs 236.84 crores had already been disbursed with 35536 claims under the process at various EHCPs.
It was further revealed that 25.74 lakh eligible beneficiary families has been insured for the current policy period. It was given out that a premium amount of Rs 1840 per family is paid by government to provide free health care in 209 local hospitals (118 public+91 private) to our population across the 20 districts of J&K. Highest average claim size of Rs 18004 has been registered in this policy period from 15th of March to 31st August this year, as was informed in the meeting.