Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, July 28

To streamline the functioning of the beleaguered Ex-servicemen Contributory Health Scheme (ECHS) and expedite payments, the financial powers of officers at various levels have been enhanced.

From July onwards, the powers of the ECHS Managing Director to reimburse medical bills have been increased from Rs 10 lakh to Rs 15 lakh. The powers of the Deputy Managing Director and Regional Director have been hiked to Rs 8 lakh and Rs 4 lakh from Rs 5 lakh and Rs 3 lakh, respectively.

Set up in 2003, the ECHS provides free medicare to over 50 lakh ex-servicemen and their entitled dependants through a network of polyclinics as well as empanelled private hospitals and diagnostic centres across the country. The empanelled hospitals, after providing cashless treatment to ECHS beneficiaries, get reimbursement from the ECHS.

Over the years, the scheme has been facing some problems such as budgetary constraints, non-availability of certain medicines and inflated billing by some private medical centres. In 2017-18, ECHS spent Rs 2824.99 crore on reimbursements, which came down to Rs 2142.49 crore in 2018-19 .

Apart from misappropriations in hospital billing, for which certain check procedures like third-party scrutiny and vetting were put in place, a major concern for the beneficiaries was shortage of medicines at polyclinics. At times, medicines could not be purchased because of budget.

The change 

• The power of the ECHS Managing Director to reimburse medical bills has been increased from  Rs 10 lakh to Rs 15 lakh
• In case of the Deputy Managing Director, it will go up to Rs 8 lakh from Rs 5 lakh
• Regional Director will be able to sanction reimbursement of up to Rs 4 lakh as against old limit of Rs 3 lakh