CMC joins health insurance scheme

VELLORE: The Christian Medical College (CMC) joined the CM’s comprehensive health insurance scheme (CMCHIS) at a function chaired by health minister Dr V S Vijay at the hospital premises on Friday.Dr Vijay said that he was happy that the century old hospital, which had sophisticated treatment facilities attracting patients from across the country, had agreed to be part of the CMCHIS. Locals were expecting that CMC be included in the insurance scheme and they would be happy to know that they could now avail the treatment facilities under the scheme. While certain surgeries were restricted to government hospitals, CMC would handle around 600 treatment procedures that included specialty surgeries out of the 1,120 provided by the scheme.“I request the people of Vellore to make use of the scheme and the facilities available at CMC,” he said. Giving details about the scheme, he pointed out that out of the 1.34 crore people to benefit from the Rs 700 crore scheme, smart cards have been issued to around 40 lakh beneficiaries so far. In the next two months, all beneficiaries would receive the cards, he added. The minister said that work was going on to establish the ‘Ward 500’ to handle insurance cases in all the 17 government medical college hospitals and 32 district headquarter hospitals. In the past three weeks, as many as 230 surgeries were done at the Rajiv Gandhi Hospital and 160 at the Stanley Medical College Hospital in Chennai and another 38 in Vellore Government Medical college under the scheme. CMC director Dr Suranjan Bhattacharji, pointed out that the hospital would extend full cooperation to the initiatives taken by the state to help the poor and needy.