Facilitating Cancer Care Through Ayushman Bharat Scheme (PMJAY) in Rural Places of India: A Narrative Review

Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY) also known as Ayushman Bharat or flagship National Health Protection Scheme is funded by the Government of India. The scheme takes into account not only the poor but rural families also, and that is why it is economically beneficial to the poor households in rural and urban areas. Either due to lack of funds or due to paucity of health care facilities at adjacent centres, cancer care in rural areas has always been suboptimal. Poor people are almost always on the verge of facing economic toxicities during cancer diagnosis, treatment or rehabilitation. Despite various available regional and national programs for healthcare in India, lack of insurance scheme was an inseparable problem. Ayushman Bharat scheme provides financial protection for access curative care at secondary and tertiary levels through engagement with both public and private sector. Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY) and Health and Wellness Centres (HWCs) are the two major components. Ayushman Bharat provides India with a great opportunity to improve the quality of health-care delivery by linking reimbursements directly to adherence to evidence-based management guidelines. Newer modalities of radiotherapy, chemotherapy and other biological therapies have been included under this scheme. Removes the burden of out of pocket expenditures. In Spite of multiple benefits PMJAY is not out of fallacies. Paucity of health care services, difficulties with implementation, failure in compensating associated indirect costs are the major drawbacks. Opportunities like delivering affordable and equitable cancer care in India, digitalization, removing heterogeneity across rural and urban India are the future perspectives. To conclude, if PMJAY can overcome these shortcomings, and also incorporate a hospital cash component, it could genuinely claim to be the world’s largest and most successful national health protection scheme.