Lucknow, May 15 In a significant move, the Uttar Pradesh government has acted against 200 private hospitals for failing to comply with the new standards for the Ayushman Bharat scheme, including migrating medical facilities to the Hospital Empanelment Module (HEM) portal, despite several reminders and warnings.
According to officials familiar with the developments, payments to 100 private hospitals have been stopped, while another 100 have been suspended from the panel.
The new guidelines mandated that hospitals empanelled under Ayushman Bharat be listed on the Hospital Empanelment Module (HEM) portal after meeting the prescribed standards and passing the facility quality assessment.
Under the new system, hospitals are mandated to meet 35 key standards. These include the hospital registration certificate, fire safety NOC, required infrastructure, doctors' educational qualifications, HFR registration, and other necessary documents and arrangements.
More than 95 percent of hospitals have migrated to the HEM 2.0 portal so far; however, some private hospitals have not completed the process within the prescribed timeline. Following their failure to comply with the standards, about 200 hospitals have been penalised. Payments to 100 hospitals have been suspended, while around 100 others have been suspended from the scheme.
The hospitals, failing to make the cut, are from districts like Agra, Aligarh, Prayagraj, Amethi, Gautam Buddh Nagar, Ghaziabad, Gonda, Gorakhpur, Hardoi, Hathras, Jaunpur, Jhansi, Kannauj, Kanpur Nagar, Kushinagar, Lalitpur, Lucknow, Mathura, Mau, Meerut, Ambedkar Nagar, Rampur and Sonbhadra.
This action has been taken to ensure that beneficiaries of the Ayushman scheme receive only standard-based and quality healthcare services.
CEO of State Agency for Comprehensive Health and Integrated Services (SACHIS) Archana Verma stated that corrective measures are being taken to make health services more transparent and accountable.
Notably, the Yogi Adityanath government has also directed all empanelled hospitals to obtain NABH quality certification.
In addition, regular audits and monitoring of hospitals are being conducted at the state and district levels to prevent irregularities in a timely manner.
Instructions have been issued to implement the ABDM-enabled HMIS system in hospitals to simplify and make patient management through digital means more transparent.
In addition, the Electronic Health Record (EHR) system is being implemented in phases.
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