Portal to aid rollout of medical insurance cover for teachers

Lucknow: Hectic preparations are underway at the State Agency for Comprehensive Health and Integrated Services (SACHIS), which is gearing up to roll out health insurance cover for govt teachers across basic and secondary education department-run schools.“To extend seamless service to the beneficiaries, SACHIS is developing a dedicated portal to host verified data,” said CEO Archana Verma. “The verified data collected through the portal will subsequently be linked with the health card generation system,” she added.“Given the scale of the programme, it is important to ensure that beneficiary records are accurate and free from duplication. The dedicated portal will facilitate verification of employees and their dependants before the data is integrated with the card-generation system,” she said.Adding that the portal will function as an umbrella to existing portals being run by state basic and secondary education departments, she informed that a need for this exercise came up after issues relating to the quality, accuracy and completeness of data collected through an earlier bulk data compilation exercise were identified during scrutiny.“The dedicated portal will enable verification of employees and their dependants before the information is finalised and integrated with the card-generation system,” she said.To note, the scheme, which recently received Cabinet approval, will provide health insurance coverage of up to Rs 5 lakh per family annually for inpatient treatment.Beneficiaries will be able to avail cashless treatment at govt hospitals as well as private hospitals empanelled under SACHIS, with treatment packages aligned to rates prescribed under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana.The state govt estimates that nearly 15 lakh teachers, education department employees and their dependants will benefit from the initiative. The annual financial outlay for the scheme is expected to be around Rs 448 crore.The scheme was announced by chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Teachers’ Day last year and is being seen as one of the largest welfare initiatives targeted at the state’s education workforce, which holds special significance ahead of the 2027 Vidhan Sabha elections.The scheme is expected to be launched by the CM later in June or the first week of July.