Health Minister probes NHA for expediting Ayushman card rollout

The scheme aims to cover more than 100 million poor and vulnerable families or about 500 million individuals, providing coverage of up to 5 lakh per family per year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalization.

The move comes amid sluggishness in the pace of roll-out of the insurance scheme, which was earlier believed to be due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Till date, only 195 million Ayushman cards have been issued, with 36 million authorized hospital admissions.

Mandaviya, who will head the NHA’s Additional Chief Executive Officer’s room, has scheduled a meeting with all the heads of departments and state governments on Monday.

“We have received a communication from the minister’s office instructing us to set up a secretariat for the health minister in the NHA. The Health Minister is likely to sit in the NHA office from Monday and will hold meetings with all heads of departments and states on Monday and personally interact with the NHA resource to take feedback.

The existing Additional CEO’s office in NHA has been replaced and will now be used by the Union Health Minister. Similarly, several other rooms have been allotted to Mandaviya’s immediate staff.

Another official said that Mandaviya had recently said during the fourth anniversary of PM-JAY Aarogya Manthan that one million Ayushman cards would be made and distributed every day.

This official said, “In order to ensure that their claim is met by the states, the minister will be working on this card creation in the states/UTs to achieve and distribute the target of making one million Ayushman cards in a day. Want to supervise the operation,” the official said.

The NHA was created in 2018 and given “full functional autonomy” to implement the flagship public health insurance scheme and achieve the vision of universal health coverage. Since inception, it has been led by a Chief Executive Officer (CEO). States have their own state health agencies, which also have full operational autonomy, according to the NHA website.

The current CEO of the authority is Dr. RS Sharma. Recently two senior officers, Deputy CEO and Additional CEO, have left the NHA.

Emailed queries to the health ministry spokesperson did not elicit any response till the time of publication.

“The Administration Department is leaving no stone unturned to arrange for the new office of the Health Minister and his team in the NHA and we are all very excited to welcome them. This is the first time that a minister will personally sit here and review things.”