Common Service Centers to help in implementation of Ayushman Bharat

NEW DELHI: The health ministry has joined hands with the electronics and information technology ministry (MeitY) to make it easier to verify and deliver individual health cards to beneficiaries eligible for the Ayushman Bharat-National Health Protection Mission (AB-NHPM).
The health ministry’s National Health Agency (NHA) on Tuesday signed an agreement with MeitY’s Common Service Centres (CSCs), which would allow it to use 300,000 such centres available in the country for this purpose, ET has learnt.

“Ayushman Bharat will work with CSC for the last mile reach. This will open new and easy ways for beneficiaries to validate their entitlement,” health minister JP Nadda said on Twitter.

Under the agreement, all CSCs are expected to be equipped by September-end with biometric facilities to allow for verification of beneficiaries who have Aadhaar cards, AB-NHPM CEO Indu Bhushan told ET. Currently, only 70,000 CSCs have this facility, he said.

At the same time, eligible beneficiaries without Aadhaar can submit the copy of a “valid” photo ID such as voter card for CSC to authenticate them with state health agencies.

“Beneficiaries can come to hospitals and get themselves validated. But that creates some uncertainty because people don’t know if they are beneficiaries or not. So, they can go to these CSCs and have a better sense of whether they’re eligible or not,” Bhushan told ET. “Since they have a network of 300,000, this is also a good way to spread the message about the scheme.”

The scheme’s guidelines mandate beneficiaries without Aadhaar to get one after their first visit. So the government is making arrangements to facilitate this as well, Bhushan said. “We’re creating other facilities for people to get Aadhaar made. We’ll provide these facilities at some hospitals too.”

AB-NHPM intends to provide more than 100 million of India’s poorest families with health coverage of Rs 500,000.

ET reported on July 18 that the government plans to print and hand-deliver about 110 million ‘family cards’ for AB-NHPM and the CSCs are expected to plug any gap in this process.

Families can also go to their nearest CSC to check whether they are eligible for the scheme in the event they haven’t received a letter from the government, Bhushan said.