Aarogyasri beneficiaries to get digital cards

Hyderabad: The beneficiaries of Aarogyasri will now be getting new digital cards as the State government on Tuesday decided to distribute the cards to them through public representatives in districts.

A board meeting was held at the Aarogyasri Health Care Trust office, Jubilee Hills, under Health Minister T Harish Rao. In the wake of the government deciding to increase the Aarogyasri limit from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 5 lakh, the beneficiaries will be getting new digital cards. The minister asked officials to complete the e-KYC process of beneficiaries quickly.

Rao directed them to take up medical audits of Aarogyasri cases by NIMS specialist doctors. He said ENT Hospital at Koti, which had successfully performed 856 black fungus surgeries successfully saving people’s lives during Covid, will be getting an additional incentive of Rs 1.3 crore.

Currently, the government is providing free cochlear implant surgeries to treat and repair deaf and dumb children at Koti ENT Hospital. A decision was taken to form a committee to make this type of service available in MGM Warangal as well. While there were only three dialysis centres in the State before the State formation, the government increased the number to 103. Dialysis centres have been set up within the constituency without the need to go to remote places. This has become a boon for kidney patients. The board has given permission to design and use special software for online monitoring in order to provide more quality dialysis services.

Apart from this, Aarogyasri has allowed patients to use face recognition software. It has been decided to implement this policy to provide services to people in a more transparent manner in the face of some difficulties due to the biometric system.