NEW DELHI: The Centre’s newly launched big-ticket health scheme seems to have thrown an unexpected surprise. Nearly two-thirds of the total surgeries and procedures under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY) have been carried out at private hospitals so far.
Officials in the National Health Agency (NHA), which was constituted to implement the programme, said only 33 per cent of the total 1,27,833 surgeries and medical procedures have been carried out at public hospitals till October 26.
“This is true for most states - those state where the scheme has taken off really well as well as others,” said Indu Bhushan, CEO of the NHA.
The scheme was launched on September 23 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi with an aim to make available cashless hospitalisation services up to `5 lakh to nearly 10 crore vulnerable families and has been implemented in 23 states so far, even though 33 states and Union Territories are on board.
Also, of the total 14,129 hospitals that have been empanelled or are in the process, 55 per cent are from the private sector despite many corporate hospitals staying away from the scheme due to low package rates on offer.
The government figures suggest that in the first one month, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and West Bengal have done well, but Bihar, Uttarakhand and Goa are lagging behind. But in both the categories, the majority of the beneficiaries are getting the hospitalisation services in private sector hospitals.
For instance, 77 per cent of the total beneficiaries in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu have gone to private hospitals. In Uttarakhand and Goa, this number is even higher at 88 and 84 per cent, respectively.
The only exception among major states is Bihar, where 100 per cent beneficiaries have availed the medical services in government hospitals, though 280 private hospitals in the state are empanelled for PMJAY.
Girdhar J Gyani of the Association of Private Healthcare Providers of India, however, said that the figures looked “surprising”.
“In my knowledge, mostly only those private hospitals that were earlier empanelled for the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana or state health insurance schemes have joined the new programme,” he told TNIE. “In such a scenario, it needs more data and input to understand how and why most beneficiaries are availing the PMJAY services in private hospitals in several states.”