Indian Medical Association‘s Haryana unit on Tuesday issued a notice announcing that 650 private hospitals across the state will stop treating patients under the Centre’s Ayushman Bharat scheme from Aug 7 if reimbursements amounting to ₹500 crore aren’t cleared by then.
Officials of IMA (Haryana), which issued a similar warning in Jan this year, said that the state’s administration of the scheme was in a state of “chronic breakdown”.
Most private hospitals have only gotten 10-15 per cent of their billed amounts in reimbursements since March, forcing them to dip into their own reserves or turn patients away, they said.
“The situation is worse than before. Hospitals cannot continue offering free treatment under the scheme without timely reimbursements. We’re now at a point where running the system is financially impossible,” said Dr Mahavir Jain, president of IMA (Haryana).
According to Haryana govt data, there are 1,300 hospitals, including 650 private ones and 60 in Gurgaon, empanelled under the Ayushman Bharat scheme.
Around 1.8 crore people in the state are registered under the health insurance scheme, which was launched by the central govt in 2018 to provide free medical facilities and treatments up to ₹ 5lakh a year.
Ayushman Bharat, which covers anything between routine tests to surgeries, can be availed by families with annual income of less than ₹2.5 lakh, the elderly, and others. Hospitals empanelled under the scheme provide free-of-charge treatment to registered patients and later raise reimbursement requests from the govt on an online portal. These reimbursements are reviewed and cleared by a state agency, after which payments are disbursed.
