Comments
Cases of patient privacy violations have cropped up in India’s most-ambitious public health insurance scheme, Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana, also known as Ayushman Bharat. In at least two cases, patient records were posted on Twitter by an Assam-based minister and a senior bureaucrat of the National Health Agency (NHA), which is implementing the scheme, creating an uproar among social-media users.
After the faux-pas, the CEO of Ayushman Bharat, Indu Bhushan, sent out a circular to the Chief Secretaries of all States, asking them to follow strict protocols regarding patient data safety. “We cannot control how politicians act; however, we have sent out a communication to all Chief Secretaries to ensure that patient data and records are not compromised,” Bhushan told BusinessLine.
On September 24, a day after the scheme was officially launched, the minister and bureaucrat under question posted patient records, including their names and golden card numbers on Twitter. After being trolled with statements such as, ‘Much violation of patient privacy?’ and ‘Please stop posting patient data which has sensitive information of the card number possibly linked to #Aadhar in public’, the tweets were taken off from public view.
“We have made sure that those tweets are deleted,” said Bhushan.
Aadhar linking
After the SC judgement on Aadhar, Bhushan said that the stand on sharing Aadhar-related patient information under Ayushman Bharat has been cleared. “Earlier, we were not sure if linking Aadhar data would be allowed, but SC has cleared the air. We will certainly not deny any patient emergency health services for lack of Aadhar as it is the matter of his/her life and death. But for elective cases which can wait, we will ask the patient to get Aadhar card made to seek Ayushman Bharat services,” he said.
Bhushan also reiterated that patient’s Aadhar data is confidential, and will not be shared to a third party. This was with regard to the concerns raised about India Stack services, which are E-KYC mechanisms used by private service providers based on Aadhar data, and a proposal of Niti Aayog to base National Health Stack on India Stack and Aadhar. “We will not share Ayushman Bharat data with health stack,” said Bhushan.
Until September 15, up to ₹2,000 crore has been disbursed from the Centre’s coffers to various States. “Another ₹4,500 crore will be disbursed by December later this year from the Central funds,” said Dinesh Arora, Deputy CEO of Ayushman Bharat.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.