The Joint Secretary, Government of India, Sudhansh Pant held a review of the progress of the ambitious ‘Ayushman Bharat Yojana’ at State Health Directorate on Monday. In the meeting, Pant expressed satisfaction on the progress of the scheme in the State.

 He said that Uttarakhand probably has become the first State in the country where apart from 5.37 lakh identified beneficiary families; the State Government has taken a decision to include all families under the scheme.

It is worth mentioning here that the Uttarakhand Government has decided to implement the scheme to give a comprehensive health insurance cover of Rs 5 lakh per year per family under the name ‘Atal Ayushman Yojana’ in the State.

The Chief Executive Officer of the scheme and additional secretary Medical health, Yugal Kishore Pant said that process of identification of beneficiaries of the scheme is complete.

He said on completion of the identification process golden cards are being distributed to 25 beneficiaries in all the districts.

Later in the day, a programme to distribute Golden cards was held in the Coronation hospital where 25 beneficiaries were provided cards of the scheme.

Talking to the media persons after the programme, Joint Secretary Sudhansh Pant said that the State Government should expedite the process of payments of the hospitals in the scheme so that the doubts in the minds of the private hospitals about getting empanelled in the scheme are cleared.

He said that 40-50 prominent private hospitals of the country are likely to be included under the scheme.

The Director General ( DG) health services, Dr T C Pant, Director Dr Amita Upreti, Nodal officer Aysuhman Bharat, Dr Saroj Naithani, Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Dehradun Dr S K Gupta and Superintendent of the Coronation hospital Dr L C Punetha participated in the golden card distribution ceremony.

The ‘Ayushman Bharat Yojana’ would be launched in Uttarakhand on September 23 by Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat.