siliconindia | | December 20198Ayushman Bharat is a centrally sponsored scheme for the underpriv-ileged and poor. It covers almost 500 million people for primary, secondary and tertiary care. The main principle of this scheme is cooperative federalism, a concept in which federal, state, and local gov-ernments interact cooperatively and collectively to solve common prob-lems, rather than making policies and acting separately .This will help to focus and solve one common problem more effectively rather individual approaches by states.1. Merging the Schemes: Many states like Kerala and Karnataka have decided to merge their state healthcare schemes into Ayushman Bharat so that the administrative costs of these schemes can be reduced and have a common scheme in place. The other benefit of a common scheme is that the citizens of those particular countries are well aware about the scheme, usage and process. This will in turn help for easy awareness to the public and the global monitoring. In countries like UK, the government directly gets involved in the healthcare system and delivery. The mode of logistics may vary from one country to other. Mainly, some of the countries use leg-islation, regulation and taxation for universal healthcare deliveries, while many other countries use public-private partnership as their strategy. In India, there is a drastic need for a universal healthcare, which is accessible to the common public.2. Reach & Depth of Healthcare Insurance Ecosystem: As per the current statistics available, in India, almost 80 percent populations are not covered by healthcare insurance. More than 70 percent of the people have out-of-pocket expenses for treating ailments. After introducing this central scheme, people are aware about the importance of healthcare scheme. This indirectly improves the healthcare insurance ecosystem. After implemen-By Sonymol K, General Manager- Nursing, Continental HospitalsHolding a PhD in Hospital Operations from IIT Delhi, Sonymol has deep insights about the Indian healthcare scenario, which she garnered while working at organizations like Wockhardt Hospitals, Max Healthcare, and Continental Hospitals.AYUSHMAN BHARAT (PM JAY) SCHEME, AUXILIARY BENEFITStation of this scheme, now, the people from rural and village areas are aware about the benefits of insurance, and this will help for preventive care and early detection of diseas-es. Simultaneously, the reach and depth of insurance sector is also increased.3. IT Backbone & Healthcare Turn-ing to More Technology Based: Due to the large size of the scheme, its monitoring, use and analysis can be better done with technol-ogy. This will in turn help to gather a cen-tral level data pool for the improvement and changes of the programme, if required. At the same time, the payment portal become more efficient and delay in the payment du-ration can be reduced. The approval process, billing, credit and submission of bills to the insurance portal can be done with technolo-gy and ensures timely recovery to the hospi-tals, so that hospital also don't end-up with large credits affecting their revenue. Again, this in turn helps to generate jobs in the IT sector, collaboration with IT and Healthcare and more employment opportunities.4. Bring-down the Cost of Treatment: Due to collective bargaining, it lowers the cost of drugs/implants and devices which IN MYOPINION
< Page 7 | Page 9 >