National Health Protection Scheme, NHPS

2008

130 million beneficiaries in more than 4.1 crore (41 million) households (2017) are currently covered by RSBY, but coverage is expected to more than double, reaching out to be expanded to reach 10 crore (100,000,000) families under the National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS). Because the programe is in the process of being rolled out while the RSBY is discontinued, there are no available figures of the exact number of beneficiaries currently under the NHPS.

2017-18 Budget estimate of INR1,000 crore (INR 10,000,000,000, ten billion) 2017-18 Expenditure of INR 505 core 2018-19 Budget estimate of INR2,000 core 2018-19 Budget revised estimates of INR2,700 crore

India's National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS) alone covers 98.9 per cent of all household beneficiaries in the region. It targets the 40% most deprived persons as per the following deprivation criteria used in the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC): Rural: families having only one room with kucha walls and kucha roof; families having no adult member between the age of 16 and 59 years; female‑headed households with no adult male member between the age of 16 and 59 years, disabled member, and no able bodied adult member in the family; SC/ST households; and landless households deriving major part of their income from manual casual labor are included in this scheme. This is roughly 7.5 crores of the total 18 crores of the rural Indian population. Other rural: households without shelter, destitute, living on alms, manual scavenger families, primitive tribal groups, and legally released bonded labor are automatically included under the scheme. These families account for an additional 0.16 crore rural beneficiaries of this scheme. Urban: 11 defined occupational categories are entitled under the scheme. Thus, of the 6.52 crore urban households, around 1.92 crores get included in the scheme.

Persons considered deprived as per the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) criteria.

Families who are found to belong to the criteria used as proxies for deprivation as per the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) – already listed in the description of the National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS) targeting mechanisms.

Health care services

The National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS) will take care of almost all secondary care and most of the tertiary care procedures. It is proposed to set up 1,50,000 health and wellness centers, from within the subcenters and primary health centers to take care of the primary health‑care element. To ensure that the umbrella of health care includes everybody, there will be no cap on family size and age in the scheme, unlike the RSBY. Priority will be given to girl child, women and and senior citizens. The benefit cover will also include pre and post-hospitalization expenses, as these were identified as one of the important out‑of‑pocket expenditures (OOPs) in literature reviewing the impact of RSBY. The NHPS foresees a family cover of INR 5 lakh (INR 500,000) per family.

After receiving the smart card, beneficiaries can seek treatment in all public hospitals, hospitals belonging to the Employee State Insurance Corporation and accredited private hospitals

Selected insurance companies enroll households directly in villages and issue a biometric smart card to beneficiaries, which can be used to access cashless treatment at any public or private hospital across India which is registered with the scheme

The card is given to the head of the household. In some states like West Bengal, the RSBY smart card is issued in the women's name

State Nodal Agencies (SNA)/ State Health Agencies (SHA) oversee monitoring the scheme, in coordination with insurance company, hospital, and district authorities, as well as other local stakeholders. Furthermore, the National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS) will rely on a back-end data management system to track all transactions and provide analytical reports