A day after The Pioneer exposed the health cards fiasco in which many dead and ineligible persons were issued the cards under the Mukhyamantri Swasthya Bima Yojna (MSBY), a red-faced State Government on Wednesday directed Principal Secretary Health Om Prakash to conduct an inquiry into the issue. An official in the know of the development disclosed that there were as many as six check points to filter out false claims for cards.
A senior official of the United India Insurance Company said that the company had decided to make the electoral rolls as the basic data for the project and provided printed forms mentioning names of the family head with a Unique Identify Number (UIN). The official further informed that the ASHA workers were provided the forms and were entrusted with door to door survey which was the first check point in the system. The second check point was when the forms submitted by the ASHA workers were sorted out. The Block Programme Manager (BPM) - overseeing the process of health cards at block level- were then supposed to check the data entry done by the Third Party Administrators (TPAs) before uploading the final data, which constituted third check point.
After the printing of the cards these BPMs were supposed to check them for further errors before handing them over to ASHA felicitators, this formed the fourth and fifth check point. The ASHA workers were then handed over the cards by ASHA felicitators for distribution with a caution that they should check them properly before handing them over. Interestingly the glaring mistakes in preparation of health cards were ignored at every step mentioned above.
The State Head of TPA, ‘Med save healthcare, Sanjay Kaul claimed the mistakes probably occurred due to the unnecessary haste adopted by the Health department officials. He said the department tried to complete six months work in one month’s period. The Director General (DG) of State Health services Dr GS Joshi said that if any discrepancy was noticed in the card then people should contact the Asha workers and the corrections would be made at special kiosks setup for the purpose within seven days.