Medical college hospitals bogged down by RSBY

Thiruvananthapuram: The Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), or Comprehensive Health Insurance Scheme, which gives a annual health expense coverage of up to Rs.30,000 a family, may have proved to be a windfall for many government hospitals. But for the medical college hospitals giving tertiary-level medical care, the scheme has not been rewarding, say administrative officials of the hospital here.

With extended paperwork and the struggle for hospitals to balance the huge claim amounts and equally huge expenditure statements, the scheme has become more of a burden for many tertiary-care hospitals, they say.

�[The] RSBY may be profitable for most public sector hospitals as the actual expenditure is low and the flow-backs of insurance payments can be considered their �profits. However, for the MCH [Medical College Hospital] here, which does a lot of high-end procedures, the expenditure is too high to rake in such �profits, a hospital official says.