The Rajasthan government has amended the Rajasthan State Pensioners Medical Concession Scheme–2021 (RGHS), transferring the authority to relax OPD and diagnostic limits from the Finance Department to the Medical and Health Department.
According to a notification issued by the Finance Department, under RGHS the current annual limit for outdoor medical medicines for pensioners is ₹50,000 and for medical tests is ₹5,000. The powers to increase these limits have now been given to the Medical and Health Department and the Rajasthan State Health Assurance Agency (RSHA) under it.
Under the new arrangement, the limit for OPD medicines can be raised up to ₹2 lakh by the Additional CEO or Joint CEO of RSHA (authorised by the Medical and Health Department), from ₹2 lakh to ₹7 lakh by the CEO of RSHA, and beyond ₹7 lakh by the Medical and Health Department (Administrative Department). For diagnostic tests, the authority to increase the current ₹5,000 limit has been assigned to the CEO of RSHA.
Previously, the authority to increase these limits rested solely with the Finance Department.
According to the notification, pensioners seeking relaxation in medicine and test limits will now have to apply online to the Medical and Health Department through the RGHS portal.
With this amendment, the process for pensioners will change in that earlier, proposals for increasing the limits had to be sent to the Finance Department, but now they can be submitted directly to the authorised officials under the Health Department. The government has stated that the objective of this change is to make the process faster and simpler at the departmental level.
