The National Health Authority (NHA), the apex body for implementing Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY) has revised the Health Benefit Package (HBP) Master under the scheme. In the revised version of Health Benefit Package, rates of some health packages have been increased by 20 per cent to 400 per cent under PM-JAY.
Around 400 procedure rates have been revised and one new additional medical management package related to black fungus has also been added. The revised package is expected to be rolled out from next month.
Mansukh Mandaviya, Union Minister of Health said “The revised packages for oncology will enhance cancer care for the beneficiaries in the country. Addition of new packages related to black fungus will be a huge relief to the beneficiaries. I am sure that the rationalised HBP will further improve the uptake of schemes in private hospitals leading to reduced Out-of-Pocket Expenditure for the beneficiaries.”
Dr RS Sharma, CEO, National Health Authority (NHA) assured that NHA constantly works on the feedback received from stakeholders for rationalization of health benefit package master. Since the inception of the AB PM-JAY scheme, new packages have been added to cover more disease conditions and regular rates of the packages are being revised to provide better healthcare services.
“These changes are necessitated to ensure effective implementation of the scheme and will be made in the Transaction Management System (TMS) to ensure that there are no challenges in portability. State Health Agencies (SHAs) currently implementing any of the previous versions of HBP can now accept and implement the latest version of HBP 2.2.”
Currently, Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY has 1669 treatment procedures out of which 1080 are surgical, 588 medical and one unspecified package.
In 2018, the scheme was launched with the HBP 1.0 with a total of 1,393 packages. The scheme aims to provide free and cashless healthcare services up to Rs 5 lacs per family per year to over 10.74 crore poor and vulnerable families (over 53 crore beneficiaries) as per Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC)-2011 database.