&w=1024&resize=1024,0&ssl=1 "Southern states lead in hospital admissions sanctioned by AB-PMJAY News from India")
Southern states are leading in hospital admissions approved under the Ayushman Bharat-Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY), with four of the five best-performing states coming from the region, according to PMJAY Dashboard data.
Tamil Nadu topped the list with 9.05 million hospitalizations since the start of the scheme, followed by Karnataka (6.60 million), Rajasthan (5.74 million), Kerala (5.46 million) and Andhra Pradesh (4.96 million). million).
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This southern dominance comes despite none of these states being among the top five producers of the Ayushman Card. Karnataka (17.5 million cards) and Andhra Pradesh (15.6 million cards) are the largest card manufacturers in the South, ranked eighth and tenth in the list.
Telangana, which joined the scheme in 2021, has issued 8.29 million Ayushman cards, more than list leaders Kerala (7.70 million cards) and Tamil Nadu (7.54 million cards).
TN and Kerala lead despite drop in admissions
According to data presented by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in Parliament, Tamil Nadu and Kerala topped the list of hospitalizations under PMJAY, despite both states witnessing a decline in sanctioned hospitalizations in the last three financial years.
Data accessed by Business Standard shows that hospital admissions to hospitals in Tamil Nadu declined from 4.39 million in FY22 to 1.05 million in FY24.
Similarly, PMJAY enrollment in Kerala declined from 1.69 million in FY22 to 1.07 million in FY24.
While these two states have seen a decline, other southern states have seen a gradual increase in hospitalizations under the scheme.
The number of approved hospitalizations in Andhra Pradesh (from 1.13 million in FY22 to 1.84 million in FY24), Karnataka (from 1.08 million in FY22 to 3.21 million in FY24) and Telangana (from 323,421 in FY22 to 618,427 in FY24) increased.
Queries sent to the health departments of Tamil Nadu and Kerala regarding the drop in hospitalizations under PMJAY did not receive a response before the time of going to press.
Biggest card makers see lower enrollment numbers
Uttar Pradesh, with 51 million Ayushman cards, recorded just 2.8 million admissions under the scheme, according to the PMJAY dashboard.
Similarly, other card-producing states such as Madhya Pradesh (40.2 million cards) and Bihar (35.6 million cards) recorded 3.35 million and 778,000 hospitalizations, respectively.
Bihar relaunched the scheme under a new name in March 2024 after a gap of three years, but there is no data available on lower enrollment numbers in other states.
According to data available on the National Health Authority (NHA) dashboard, the scheme has so far covered more than 356 million citizens, who have been issued Ayushman cards to get free health insurance worth Rs 5 lakh for hospitalization.
To date, more than 68 million hospitalizations at a cost of Rs 90,204 crore have been covered under this scheme.
PMJAY is the world's largest publicly funded health insurance scheme which aims to provide health coverage of Rs 5 lakh per household to around 550 million (55 million crore) individuals, covering 123.4 million households for admission into secondary and tertiary care hospitals.
Household coverage depends on the deprivation and occupational criteria of the 2011 Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC 2011) for rural and urban areas, respectively.
The scheme was later expanded to cover Accredited Social Health Workers (ASHA), Anganwadi workers and all citizens aged 70 and above.
