Achieving another milestone in just over a year, the Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY) on Monday crossed the 50 lakh treatment mark. There are nine hospital admissions every minute across India under the scheme. Under the flagship health assurance scheme of the Narendra Modi government, free secondary and tertiary treatment worth Rs 7,901 crore has been availed in the 32 states and UTs implementing the scheme.

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According to the National Health Authority (NHA) figures, more than 60 per cent of the amount spent has been on tertiary care. Segments like cardiology, orthopaedics, radiation, oncology, cardio-thoracic and vascular surgery, and urology have emerged as the top tertiary specialities.

Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh have emerged as the top performing states under the scheme.

Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said: "The Ayushman Bharat family is growing by leaps and bounds. In just over one year, under PM-JAY more than 50 lakh treatments have been availed by beneficiaries across the country."

NHA CEO Indu Bhushan said: "50 lakh hospital treatments is a significant milestone for PM-JAY, but there is a long journey ahead. The scheme will continue to focus on reducing catastrophic out-of-pocket health expenditure, improving access to quality health care and meeting the unmet need of the population for hospitalization care, so that we move towards the vision of Universal Health Coverage."

The 50 lakh hospital admissions have taken place in the public and empanelled private hospitals that provide care to the beneficiaries under the scheme. To date, 18,486 hospitals have been empanelled across India. In the first year, 53 per cent of the empanelled hospitals are private, especially multi-specialty hospitals. There have been more than 50,000 portability cases, wherein migrant and travelling eligible Indians have availed their treatment outside their home states.

The aim of PM-JAY is to bring quality healthcare to more than 50 crore poor and vulnerable Indians across the country. The scheme gives annual healthcare benefits of up to Rs 5 lakh for every entitled family, and provides cashless and paperless access to services for the beneficiary at the point of service.