A team of 8 legislators and other officials from Puducherry, along with Speaker R Radhakrishnan and Minister for IT and Public Works MOHF Shah Jahan, visited the Secretariat on Wednesday and held discussions with Health Minister D L Ravindra Reddy on the working of the Rajiv Arogyasri program.
The Health and Arogyasri Minister detailed them about the scheme including how it took care of a patient right from admission stage till he was discharged from the hospital.
The scheme is believed to have impressed the visitors.
Speaking to media persons later, the Speaker of Puducherry expressed his appreciation of the implementation of the scheme, and its services covering the poor families.
The visiting team was all praise of the insurance cover under Arogyasri and its implementation besides the commitment of the government. The scheme was described as an innovative model and Andhra Pradesh was quite ahead of other states in the country to serve the poor.
President and CEO of National E-Governance Ajay Sawhney, who is also Joint Secretary, New Delhi, was impressed by the IT solutions relevant in the health schemes to promote the services. He was of the opinion that Andhra Pradesh' model was worth emulating at the national level. The visiting team asked Dr. Ravindra Reddy to help promote the same scheme in Puducherry also.
Dr. Ravindra Reddy had earlier explained to them the functioning of the Arogyasri including the health initiatives and the services in the government hospitals in Andhra Pradesh.
Details of the specialist pool of doctors in government hospitals and unique PPP model insurance of Arogyasri were explained to them.
The minister assured all help to the visiting team to help initiate such a scheme in Puducherry apart from sharing the technical information.
Dr. Ravindra Reddy informed that since 2008, over 23000 health camps had been organised covering over 39 lakh patients besides treating over 19 lakh out-patients and 9.89 lakh in-patients in 344 network hospitals. Also, Rs. 2465.08 crore was spent on 8.6 lakh patients who underwent surgery/therapy, he said.