A Demographic and Psychological Study on Universal Health Care Pmjay Model and Its Experience

Abstract

Good Health is a fundamental requirement and right of every individual in any society. It is the duty of the Government to ensure Best Health Care Support to all its citizens.  Financially Weaker and Poor section of the population are the worst hit if there is no access to health care support or if the health care support is inadequate for them. Most of the earlier schemes in India have run in to rough weather due to multiple reasons. Government’s resources cannot be allowed go waste down the drain. To overcome the problems, Government of India introduced the new health care programme called Ayushman Bharat. The current study provides empirical evidence with regard to its coverage (comprehensiveness), linkage (Awareness and Availability of facilities), transmission and efficiency (final outcome). To understand whether the AB Scheme takes care of all expectations of the targeted population, 35 actual beneficiaries and their families were personally interviewed through administering a comprehensive questionnaire encompassing over areas of coverage (adequacy), linkage (access), and transmission(timely support) to share their actual experience and opinion. The answers given are tubulated and analysed using SPSS 25 Software. It is found that, awareness level was very low as majority of the people have got to know of this programme only on getting admitted in hospital. However, the beneficiaries are quite happy with the treatment delivery mechanism as their experience at the time of admission and discharge is noted to be very good. So also, the comfort level and medical care whilst in the hospital is also found to be very good. As the programme is expected to be run on the lines of Universal Health Care, the scheme needs to be made available to all people irrespective of one’s economic status. The awareness needs to be scaled up by giving Top Priority.