Electronics and Information Technology (E&IT) Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Thursday set a target for Common Service Centers to enrol five crore people under the Central government’s Ayushman Bharat healthcare scheme in the next two months.
“In the last four years, our VLEs [village level entrepreneurs who operate the CSCs] have become change agents of rural India,” the Minister added while speaking at an event in the national capital.
Ayushman Bharat aims to provide coverage of up to ₹5 lakh per family per year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalisation.
Ayushman Bharat Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dr. Indu Bhushan, who was also present at the event, noted that the healthcare scheme was launched 170 days back and every day “we are benefitting 3 lakh people” under it, with 2.5 crore cards issued till now. “Of these, nearly 80% cards have been issued through CSCs,” he added.
The CSCs and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoH&FW) had earlier partnered to implement the Ayushman Bharat scheme using the over 3 lakh-strong CSC network across the country. Under the partnership, CSCs help a beneficiary identify his name in the MoH&FW database and his entitlement for the scheme, and help them scan/upload KYC (Know Your Client) documents for identity, among other things.
CSCs get about ₹30 for supporting the beneficiary, identification, uploading documents and printing a laminated card.
