NMC asks medical colleges to use national dialysis program portal

The National Medical Commission (NMC) has directed all medical colleges to use the Pradhan Mantri National Dialysis Program portal to cater to the needs of patients requiring costly kidney dialysis services.

The union government aims to focus on expanding coverage of Pradhan Mantri National Dialysis Program (PM-NDP) with a provision of free dialysis services to the poor in all the states. However, above poverty line patients can also avail the services at discounted rates.

“All medical colleges (both private and government) which are promoting dialysis services are directed to use the PMNDP portal to provide smooth delivery of necessary dialysis services to every patient having unique AHBA ID (UHID) and to improve visibility and have uniform IT platform for capturing details of all the beneficiaries,” Dr Sandhya Bhullar, secretary, NMC, wrote to the medical colleges.

“It is further informed that the portal is fully functional and well established. If any training is required to operate the said portal, it will be organized by the National Health System Resource Centre (NHSRC),” stated the letter.

“In India, around two lakh people suffer from kidney related complication every year and they need to undergo kidneys transplant, but only 10,000 patients get donors while the rest of the patients sustain through dialysis which is a cost approx. ₹1 lakh in private centers in a month. The government’s dialysis program is going to help thousands of patients every year in getting dialysis free of cost in government hospitals and at subsidized rate in the private hospitals,” Anup Kumar, head of urology and kidney transplant department at Safdarjung Hospital said.

Under the national dialysis program, states have also been advised to extensively use PMNDP portal, an API-based IT platform for capturing details of all beneficiaries availing free dialysis services. “Furthermore, to prevent duplication and ensure transparency, efficiency and inter-operability, an enabling environment is being created to ensure registration using 14-digit unique ABHA ID,” said a government official aware of the matter. LiveMint