Claims raised by hospitals for providing treatment will be reimbursed from the Motor Vehicle Accident Fund. File image for representation.
| Photo Credit: AP
With elections round the corner, the government on Wednesday announced a pilot project to provide cashless treatment of up to ₹1.5 lakh to all victims of road accidents.
The pilot programme was announced by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways through a press statement. The pilot will be undertaken in Chandigarh to establish an “ecosystem for providing timely medical care to the victims of road accidents, including during the golden hour,” it said.
Victims will be entitled to cashless treatment of upto ₹1.5 lakhs per person for a maximum period of seven days from the date of accident. The pilot scheme will be applicable to all victims of road accidents, which involves a motor vehicle, that occurred on any category of road. The packages for trauma and polytrauma offered under Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana will also be co-opted under the scheme.
Claims raised by hospitals for providing treatment will be reimbursed from the Motor Vehicle Accident Fund.
The golden hour is the one-hour period following a traumatic injury during which there is the highest likelihood of preventing death by providing prompt medical care, according to the Motor Vehicles Amendment Act, 2019. The amendment also provided for “a scheme for cashless treatment of road accident victims” as well as a Motor Vehicle Accident Fund.
The National Health Authority will be the implementing agency for the pilot programme, and will co-ordinate with police, hospitals and State Health Agency.
The implementation will rely on an IT platform which will use data from the Road Ministry’s Integrated Road Accident Database (iRAD) where police personnel enter data on road accidents along with photos and videos.
