In a major relief to road accident victims, the Centre on Wednesday announced a provision of free cashless treatment up to Rs 2.5 lakh to ensure that the victim gets immediate medical care including during the ‘Golden Hour’. According to a Government notification, the policy will also cover foreign nationals if they meet with any such road eventuality.
The Road Transport and Highways Ministry has roped in the National Health Authority (NHA), which is implementing Ayushman Bharat PM Jan Aarogya Yojna, to process the claims raised by hospitals after treating the injured and will use its robust IT platform to run the scheme.
The idea of such a facility for road accident victims was first conceived in 2012 and was announced for a pilot project launch in December 2014.
“The Ministry will set up a Motor Vehicle Relief Fund with its own contribution and also from the General Insurance Company (GIC). The GIC will bear the expenses incurred on victims due to accidents involving insured vehicles and in ‘hit and run’ cases. The road transport ministry will bear the expenditure for crashes involving uninsured vehicles,” said a senior MoRTH official.
The move is considered to be significant considering that nearly 1.49 lakh people lost lives in road accidents in 2019 and about five lakh were left injured. About 15 per cent of the fatalities are on account of ‘hit and run’ cases. According to a report, about 50 per cent deaths can be avoided by ensuring timely medical care to the accident victims. The official said the policy aims to bring relief to the poor who can’t pay upfront to hospitals for medical care in case of accident on roads.
As per the plan, NHA will set up a dedicated cell for implementation of the scheme and settling the claims.
NHA has been involved considering its expertise in implementing Ayushman Bharat scheme.
Nearly 20,000 private and government hospitals are on the NHA platform and this would come as a big help for quicker and successful implementation of the scheme.
The Centre had launched pilot projects on three highway stretches that provided the victim cashless treatment for up to Rs 30,000. The NH covered under such a scheme were Gurgaon-Jaipur section of NH 8, Mumbai-Vadodara of NH 8 and Ranchi-Rargaon-Mahulia of NH 33.
Another senior MoRTH official explained that a GPS enabled ambulances, connected with a central control room through a toll-free number 1033, will be stationed at distance of 20 km to transport the injured to the hospitals for treatment within the Golden Hour.