RSBY National Workshop at Ranchi

The fourth RSBY National workshop is being organized at Ranchi from 09th to 11th April 2012. All the States active in RSBY are participating in this workshop. Representatives of Insurance Companies, Third Party Administrators, Smart Card Service Providers, International Agencies and other interested agencies are participating in this workshop.

Second Edition of RSBY Newsletter Available now

The second edition of RSBY newsletter RSBY Connect is available on the RSBY website. It can be downloaded from here.

Comments and suggestions are welcome and invited.

RSBY Takes Decision to migrate to 64kb Smart Cards

Ministry of Labour and Employment, Government of India has taken a decision to move from current 32kb smart cards to 64kb smart cards in a phased way. From April 2012 identified set of districts will start issuing 64kb smart cards. All the other districts will migrate to 64kb over next 12 months. 

Specifications of new Enrollment software have been released by MoLE and new enrollment software will be ready from April 2012. 

MoLE has decided that now the Transaction Software will be prepared at the central level and will be provided free of cost to all the Insurance Companies. This Transaction Software is being prepared at present and will be released by April 2012.

It has also been decided that all the Smart Card Service Providers will need to be accredited by Quality Council of India and they need to apply by end of February 2012 and get the accreditation by 15th March 2012. 

RSBY Newsletter

RSBY has started publishing a monthly newsletter to share with the larger audience information about the scheme in a structured basis periodically. The first newsletter in this series was released in February 2012 and this is available here.

Now suggestions and articles are invited for the new newsletter for the month of March which can be sent on rsby.connect@gmail.com in terms of good practices, innovations, beneficiary experience, write-ups etc.

You are also welcome to provide your suggestions for the newsletter.

RSBY Story on BBC

BBC is doing a story on RSBY and their team is visitng field and meeting people who are working for RSBY. BBC will telecast this story on 30th May at 11:00am in their programme called India Business Review and will be again shown in the night at 10:00pm.

Announcement of National Workshop of RSBY 2010

Government of India is organizing a Two-day National Workshop of Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) in Chandigarh from 02nd July to 3rd July 2010. Representatives of Government of India, State Governments, Other Government Agencies, Insurance Companies, Third Party Administrators, Smart Card Agencies, Public & Private hospitals, and International Agencies who are associated with RSBY will participate in this workshop.

Interested people/ organizations may send their request to participate in this workshop by filling the registration form at http://www.rsby.in/Registration1.aspx . Please note that filling up of this form does not guarantee participation in this workshop. Government of India will send invitation to selected individuals/ organizations in advance of the event.

Hospital and NGO Workshop in Jharkhand

Government of Jharkhand is organising a workshop with NGOs and Hospitals on 24th April in Ranchi. The first half of the workshop will be focussed on discussion with NGOs and their role in RSBY. Experience of few NGOs who are working in the field will be shared. Government will discuss with NGOs about their role and how they can participate in RSBY to make it more effective in reaching the beneficiaries.

The second half of the workshop will be with hospitals and the agenda will be to discuss with hospitals about their role in RSBY and to explain them the benefits of joining RSBY. Few hospitals will share their expernece of RSBY also in this workshop.

RSBY Now on Facebook

A Group of RSBY has been created on the facebook which is called "Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana". This can also be used for information dissemination and discussions. The RSBY movie and few photographs of the scheme are already available there now.

RSBY Launched in More North Eastern States

RSBY was launched in the States of Arunachal  Pradesh and Mizoram from this year. The State Workshop was organised on 25th March in Itanagar and on 26th March in Aizawl. reresentatives of the Government of India, State Government officials, District officials, Inaurance Company representatives, TPA representatives, representatives of hospitals and NGOs participated in the workshop. In Arunachal Pradesh RSBY is being implemented by Rural Development Department and in Mizoram it is being implemented by Department of Health.

With these workshops, now RSBY has been launched in all the North Eastern States except Sikkim State.

Extension of RSBY to NREGA Beneficiaries, Railway Coolies and Hawkers

In view of the success of the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) scheme, the Union government has decided to extend its benefits to NREGA beneficiaries who have worked for more than 15 days during the preceding financial year in a move to provide health insurance to them.

Railway Minister in her railway budget also announced extension of RSBY to railway coolies and hawkers across India.

In addition to the Building and Construction Workers who have already been covered under the scheme these announcements indicates that now RSBY is going to cover people who may not be BPL. 

RSBY Launched in Manipur

State workshop of RSBY was organised in Imphal on 19th February. Government of Manipur has decided to implement RSBY in all the nine districts of the State. New India Insurance Company has been selected through an open tendering process and they will be implementing the scheme in the State.

RSBY Regional workshop at Cochin

As part of the series of regional workshops, regional workshop for South and West regions was organised in Cochin on 18th and 19th Feb. Representatives of State Governments of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Tamilnadu, Karnataka and Kerala along with representatives of Insurance Companies, Third Party Administrators and Smart Card Agencies participated in the workshop.

Intensive discussions took place with all the stakeholders and the perfomance of the States in implementing RSBY was reviewed. The purpose of these regional workshops is to share issues relating to  the implementation of the scheme and try to learn from each other's good practices. Another important objective of organising these workshops for Government of India is to seek feedback and suggestions from the States regarding the current issues and proposed intiatives within RSBY.

RSBY Reaches Landmark of 12 million BPL Families

In just a little over 22 months since its beginning RSBY reached the landmark of covering 12 million BPL families on 16th Feb 2010. This translates into approximately 50 million people covered under RSBY across India. RSBY has started or in the process of being implemented in 25 States now.

Following States have already started implementing the scheme:
Assam, Bihar, Chandigarh, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Orissa, Punjab, Tamilnadu, Tripura, Uttarakhand and West Bengal

RSBY is in the process of being implemented in the following States:
Manipur, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh

For further details and data regarding implementation please visit http://www.rsby.in/

New Website for RSBY

RSBY relaunched its website with a new face last week sometime. The address of the website is www.rsby.in The new website is more user friendly and easy to navigate. The main highlight of this website are as follows:

• Latest information and data about RSBY is available through this website
• Viewers can see on the front page itself the no. of smart cards which have been issued till now.
• In the scheme status page, RSBY enrollment and empanelment data is available at National, State and District level
• The contact of State Nodal Agency and the Insurer for each State has also been provided on the website
• Another new addition to the website is the new logo of RSBY which highlights the aspect of protection to a five member family
• A separate media page is available now but at present there are very few media reports available on the page.

Overall this web site is quite an improvement over the earlier one. However few more things can be added in due course of time like data on utilisation of services by beneficiaries.

RSBY Reaches to 40 Lakhs Families

RSBY reached a landmark of distributing 40 lakhs smart card by the end of 31st March 2009. This means that approximately 2 crore beneficiaries across seventeen States of India are now already covered with RSBY. Two states Delhi and Haryana have already finished one year and now in the process of renewal. In further fifteen states enrollment is going on for RSBY. Five more states are about to start the process in next months.

For a scheme which started distributing smart card only in February 2008 it is a credible achievement in only thirteen months. Considering the fact that RSBY needs the insurer to go to the village and issue smart card to the beneficiaries in the village itself after taking their fingerprint and photographs this is not a small achievement.

 

Seven general/ health insurance companies (Four public and three private) are providing benefits to BPL people. This has resulted in a healthy competition between the insurers. Insurers are also trying to work together so as to learn from the efforts of each other in different states while at the same time they are also trying to synergies their efforts wherever possible. MoLE is also constantly engaging in dialogue with the insurers, State Governments and other stakeholders to constantly fine tune the scheme and improve its efficiency.

Release of New Version of Enrolment Software

Ministry of Labour and Employment, GoI released the new version of enrolment software which is called Version 4. This software has lot of new features which caters to the demand from the field. This software improves the efficiency of the enrollment process by adding new features.

One of the main highlight of this version is that now it allows to modify the name of the dependants also in the field at the time of enrolment. This will help a lot in field as there were cases where details of the dependants were not correct. Now this will not only help in improving the enrolment process but will also lead to correction of BPL data. Few significant changes in this version are as follows:

• Policy Start Date: Policy start date shall be the first day of enrolment month plus one month. For e.g. if the enrolment and card issuance was done on 18th Aug 2008 policy start date shall be 1st September 2008. However, if in the same district another card is issued on e.g. 5^th September the policy start date will still be 1st September only.
  
• Renewal Process: Process for Renewal of already issued cards is added
  
• Enrolment Output format: Format of output required to be submitted to MoLE subsequent to enrolment is added
  
• Pre-enrollment: Process for pre-enrollment is added
  
• Edition of data in the field: Now along with Gender and Age, modifications in name of Dependents also are allowed. However, name of the Head of Household cannot be modified.
  
• Provision for renewal: Updated Card layout to cater for 2 policies on the card at a time. This will be applicable when renewal of policy will happen before the end of current policy period
  

The detailed specifications of version 4 can be accessed by clicking here which is available at RSBY website.

Implementation Status of RSBY as on 24th March

Since its launch in end 2007 RSBY has been started by many states. At present 22 States are at different levels of implementation of RSBY. Five more States are in the process of issuing the tender for RSBY. Districts across States are being taken in a phased manner so as to cover all the districts in next three years. However, few states like Kerala, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Delhi, Haryana have already tendered for all the districts in the State.

Till now more than 36,00,000 households across India have already received smart cards in Seventeen States of India. This makes it the largest Central Government funded scheme in India which is using a smart card technology.

• Cards issued – App. 3.6 million
  
• People enrolled – App. 15 million
  
• States which have started the tendering process – Twenty two
  
• States which have signed MoU with Central Government – Eighteen
  
• States where enrolment has started – Seventeen
  
• States where Service delivery has started - Eleven
  

For detailed information and related documents of the scheme please access Official website of RSBY - www.rsby.in

Introduction to RSBY

The Ministry of Labour and Employment (MoLE) has recently launched a National Health Insurance scheme for Unorganised Sector Below Poverty Line (BPL) workers. The scheme,  called “Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana” (National  Health Insurance Plan) is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme of the Government of India and aims to improve social security for the informal sector workers by providing health insurance cover. Central Government bears 75% cost of premium (for North Eastern States and J&K it is 90%) while State Govt. bear 25% (for North Eastern States and J&K it is 10%) of the cost. Beneficiaries have to pay a registration fee of Rs 30/- only per household per year. The scheme was started in late 2007 and is being taken up in a phased manner; all districts of the country are likely to be  covered  by March, 2013. The scheme aims to provide cashless treatment upto Rs. 30,000/- to BPL people in networked public and private hospitals, thus providing a choice to the informal sector workers in terms of selection of service providers. Government of India has also included maternity and new born care with effect from 2009-10.

RSBY is being implemented by the respective State Governments. They select an insurance company, through public tendering, which implements RSBY in the State. Both public and private insurance companies are free to bid for the tender.

RSBY is very different from other Government sponsored health insurance schemes in the past. Following features distinguish RSBY from similar initiatives in the past:

• Empowering the beneficiary –freedom of choice in terms of selection of public or private providers
• Information Technology (IT) Intensive – For the first time at such large scale IT is used for social development scheme. Rural areas every beneficiary family is issued a biometric enabled smart card containing identification particulars etc.
• Business Model for all Stakeholders – The scheme has been designed as a business model for a social sector scheme
• Safe and foolproof – use of smart card and processes designed for enrolment will minimize misuse. Use of Key Management System to minimise frauds.
• Portability – the smart card will be eventually valid across length and breadth of the country
• Cash less transactions for beneficiaries and paperless transactions for participating providers
• Paper less transactions for both providers and beneficiaries

For detailed information and related documents of the scheme please access Official website of RSBY - www.rsby.in