Will provide health cards to 1.10 cr state residents under Atal Ayushman Yojana: U’khand CM

Haridwar: Atal Ayushman Yojana, launched on the birth anniversary of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee last year, completed its first year in Uttarakhand on Wednesday. Speaking at an event held at the CM's residence in Dehradun to mark the occasion, chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat hailed Atal Ayushman Yojana as ‘the world's largest health plan’, claiming that 10 crore BPL families (across the country) have benefited from this scheme. He added that the state has now set an ambitious target of providing golden cards (which entitle people to receive treatment worth Rs 5 lakh) to 1.10 crore state residents under the scheme. He also felicitated the representatives of government and private hospitals who had done commendable work under the scheme.

Speaking on the occasion, DK Kotia, chairman of Atal Ayushman Uttarakhand Yojana, said that Uttarakhand is second only to Kerala in providing golden cards and so far, 34.7 lakh cards have been made under the scheme. The official also claimed that one lakh patients had availed treatment under the scheme in the past year.

While the government hailed the scheme as a ‘mega success in the state’, many patients whom TOI spoke to, said that a lot more needed to be done to improve the services available under the scheme. Mamta Kumari, a Premnagar resident, said, “I was referred to a private facility after doctors said that I needed to undergo a Caesarean delivery. However, I had a normal delivery. Later, we were made to pay the hospital charges for normal delivery as the authorities there told us that Atal Ayushman Scheme is not applicable when a woman has a normal delivery.”

Another patient, Chandramohan Sodhi, 58, a Race Course resident, said that only the hospitals offering multiple specialities should be empanelled under the scheme. “During emergency, a heart patient is rushed to the nearest empanelled hospital. But quite often, when the patient reaches there, the hospital authorities say that they don’t offer heart treatment package. Likewise, so many hospitals have just picked up few treatment packages based on their own convenience and not on the convenience of patients.”

Another point of concern in the scheme is the use of fraudulent measures deployed by many hospitals in Uttarakhand. As many as 14 hospitals were de-empanelled by the health department because they had tried to extort money from the scheme through fraudulent means.