Five months since the launch of ‘Ayushman Bharat Scheme’ by the central government, operations in government-run
hospitals incity have been stopped for past two months as funds being provided under this scheme are still not  disbursed to the hospitals, sources said.

The central government launched ‘Ayushman Bharat Scheme’ in September to provide costly operations in  government hospitals like Medical, Mayo and Super Speciality. However, even as these hospitals started performing surgeries, the government failed to release the funds and as a result, hospitals have stopped the procedures, sources said.

Beneficiaries, who have been waiting for operations since last two months, are now questioning the purpose of the scheme, they said. It has been five months since the launch of ‘Ayushman Bharat’ scheme but only one hip-joint replacement was performed in Medical hospital due to paucity of funds, sources said.

At Mayo, five hip replacement surgeries had been performed during the period but the hospital has yet to receive the cost of Rs eight lakh towards it. Similarly, three heart operations were performed at Super Speciality but it did not get Rs 4.5 lakh towards these surgeries so far, they said and informed that these hospitals charge Rs 1.5 lakh from the
patient for the operation.

Sources further said 11 patients are awaiting heart surgeries in Super Speciality, 40 others for knee and hip  replacement in Medical and 50 in Mayo. With these hospitals failing to get the amount for last two months,
they have stopped the surgeries, they said.

The families having income up to Rs one lakh per year were included into the list of beneficiaries, which was prepared based on the 2011 Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC). In Nagpur district, 3,77,301 families made it to the list and five members of each family would get the benefit of the scheme. Under the scheme, the beneficiary families get Rs 5 lakh health insurance in a year and could seek treatment for any illness in any hospital in India.