Andhra Pradesh Healthcare Services

The Health Medical and Family Welfare Department of Government of Andhra Pradesh is providing affordable, qualitative, and timely healthcare services through public healthcare facilities majorly and through the private institutions partly, to the needy. Ensuring access to health facilities is one of the top agenda item for the state. The required healthcare services are being provided through 10,032 YSR health clinics, 1145 primary health centers (PHCs), 198 community health centers (CHCs), 28 area hospitals, 14 district hospitals, 23 teaching and allied hospitals, 11 medical colleges in addition 2 dental colleges, 10 nursing colleges, and 8 nursing schools. Apart from these, 560 urban primary health centers (UPHCs) are facilitating health access to the people of the state in urban areas.

In accordance with the goals of the National Health Mission for providing universal access to equitable, affordable, and qualitative healthcare services all the health facilities starting from PHCs till teaching hospitals are being upgraded to IPHS/NMC standards both in terms of manpower by sanctioning additional medical, paramedical, and supporting staff with the largest ever recruitment in the history of the state 9712 healthcare professionals are recruited on regular basis and another 21,662 are recruited an ad hoc basis. The health infrastructure in the state is being upgraded with ₹16,270 crore.

Government with an intention to provide uninterrupted round the clock primary healthcare services to the needy at any point of time, all the 1145 PHCs have been upgraded as round the clock PHCs with required additional human resources.

The major gap in providing timely healthcare services in the State is being addressed by sanctioning 18,647 Dr YSR Health Clinics of which 10,032 are village health clinics and 8615 are ward health clinics. These health clinics are being established with an intention of providing door step primary healthcare services to the villagers and urban population with MLHP (staff nurse with BSc nursing) and ANM as full time staff in these health clinics to provide basic healthcare services including OPD, immunization, screening for NCDs, treatment for CDs with 14 types of diagnostic and 67 varieties of medicines to fulfil time to care principle.

The major gap in providing effective RCH services is addressed by strengthening grass root level health functionaries by recruiting 13,683 additional ANMs thereby increasing the functional ANMs to 19,843. All the 42,752 ASHAs who were hitherto drawing performance-based incentives ranging from ₹2000 to 3000 per month has been increased to assured fixed remuneration of ₹10,000 per month. All these grass root functionaries have been strengthened to provide door step healthcare services and also to regularly monitor pregnant and lactating women. They are also ensuring that all pregnant women access monthly ANC check-ups with an intention to reduce maternal mortality ratio (MMR). Regular house visits are also mandated to identify any sick new born and refer them to 53 SNCUs for further management to reduce Infant mortality rate (IMR). These house visits are also helpful in identifying any birth defects or development delays and to refer them to higher facilities for required corrections. In addition, they are also mandated to screen population for NCDs and to refer any suspected to higher facilities for medical/surgical management.

Government of Andhra Pradesh issued orders for payment of monthly pensions ranging from ₹3000 to ₹10000 to patients suffering from chronic diseases as part of Navaratnalu to ensure decent undependable life.

In accordance with the vision of the Digital Health Mission of Government of India, Government of Andhra Pradesh is planning to establish digital health ecosystem that supports universal health coverage in an efficient, accessible, inclusive, affordable, timely and safe manner and a seamless online platform through the provision of a wide range of data, information and infrastructure services, duly leveraging open, interoperable, standards-based digital systems, and ensures the security, confidentiality and privacy of health-related personal information. In this direction it is being planned to create electronic health record for every citizen in the state which can be accessed from any of the health facility in the State. The required hardware and software for the same starting from sub center to teaching hospital will be upgraded accordingly.

Technology is being leveraged to bridge the gap of providing specialty healthcare services at the PHC level in rural and remote areas. Telemedicine is being operationalized in a phased manner starting with PHCs currently. Under this Hub and Spoke model PHCs are currently accessing specialist services as a spoke connected to telemedicine hub where physician, gynecologist, and pediatrician along with medical officers providing specialist services to the needy patients at PHCs. The same is now extended to sub centers in the state.

Technology is also being leveraged to screen all the differently abled persons and to issue a digitally signed permanent disability certificate to all the eligible in the state in a saturation mode to enable them to avail all the financial and non-financial benefits extended to them by the government. Government had extended the program to 171 hospitals to ensure screening in all the Assembly Constituencies.

Andhra Pradesh is the first state in the country to roll out Aarogyasri-Free health insurance program providing free tertiary care services in government and private network hospitals to all BPL families in the state. The scheme is further improvised with added packages to cover 2436 procedures currently with financial limit of ₹5 lakhs for family per annum. The cashless treatment includes OP registration, free diagnostics, consultation, surgical procedures/medical treatment, consumables, post discharge medicines for ten days and follow-up for certain procedures. All the 19,843 ANMs have been redesignated as Aarogyamitras and are given responsibility of identifying, referring and to follow-up patients needing tertiary care services and to ensure that the packages covered under Aarogyasri are accessed seamlessly and freely. Post-operative sustenance allowance (Aarogya Aasara) is also being sanctioned to the patients who underwent surgeries under Dr. YSRAS for the post-op recovery period at ₹225/-per day subject to a maximum of ₹5000/-per month to ensure that they take adequate rest for full recovery.