NHA pulls up MP, TN, Odisha, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Kerala, Telangana, Delhi for not registering public health units

New Delhi: The National Health Authority (NHA) has asked eight states, including some of India’s top performers in terms of health indicators, to complete the registration of state-government run public health facilities on the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) platform by 30 September.

Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Kerala, Telangana and Delhi are yet to verify government-run health facilities for their inclusion in the Health Facility Registry (HFR). Except for Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand, all the other states have non-Bharatiya Janata Party governments.

To be sure, Kerala and Tamil Nadu are among the top in Niti Aayog’s ‘Performance in Health Outcomes Index’.

The HFR is one of the building blocks of the ABDM, the Central scheme that aims to create a national digital health ecosystem. It aims to be a comprehensive repository of the country’s health facilities across all systems of medicine—private and public health facilities including hospitals, clinics, pharmacies etc.

The Health Facility Registry

The creation of HFR for all health facilities is the first step towards the digitization of the health system in the country. At present, 320,000 health facilities are registered in HFR.

There is a huge difference between facilities listed on the National Health Resource Repository (NHRR), which is an older database, and those registered on HFR. 

NHRR was set up in 2018—also to collect data of all public and private healthcare institutions across India. This was carried out with the Central Bureau of Health Intelligence (CBHI), under the ministry of health & family welfare. 

For instance, Tamil Nadu has 15,769 government hospitals on the NHRR database but has registered only 500 on HFR; while Odisha has 9,096 government hospitals on NHRR and registered only four on HFR. Similarly, Uttarakhand has around 3,184 public hospitals on the NHRR, but lists 1,855 on the HFR and Delhi has 1,811 public health institutions on the NHRR but listed 999 on the HFR.

“At present, all the public health facilities of some have not registered on HFR. NHA also offers a solution for a bulk uploading of the public facilities in the ABDM ecosystem by State Mission Directors. In this regard, it is requested that you either make use of bulk-upload feature for public health facilities or at least convey instructions to all the state government-owned health facilities to get themselves registered on HFR by 30 September 2024,” said Dr Basant Garg, Additional CEO, NHA, in a communication to all the state governments reviewed by Mint. 

“In particular, the states of Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Kerala, Telangana and Delhi are requested to look into this issue specifically,” the official added.

Earlier, NHA had directed all states governments to expedite the verification process of hospitals listed on the ABDM platform. Verification is done to ensure that these hospitals are not fraudulent and submitted information is correct.

ABDM has a key mandate to develop digital health IDs for citizens–although these Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) IDs are voluntarily. 

So far, around. 660 million health IDs have been created for citizens to enable them with exchange of medical records and accessible to doctors within the ABDM network.

Queries sent to the health ministry spokesperson remained unanswered.