The Indo German Programme on Universal Health Coverage (IUHC) aims to strengthen the capacities of two major stakeholders, 1) National officials who formulate policy recommendations and 2) State officials who are responsible for overall management and implementation of PM-JAY.
The national stakeholders are required to be equipped to strategically align PM-JAY with Universal Health Coverage (UHC) through formulation of policy recommendations based on empirical evidence and suggest course correction as the programme evolves. This will be achieved through promoting exchange of learning experiences from diverse regions within the country as well as abroad. Best practices and experiments will be identified, documented and disseminated for better implementation decisions.
The second category, state level stakeholders are important as they ensure smooth implementation of PM-JAY at State level. These personnel determine the course of success towards UHC as they are responsible for expanding the networks of empanelled hospitals, information management and payments to service providers and insurance management. In this course, IGUHC will be ensuring sufficient availability of manpower at State level who are trained to operationalise PM-JAY implementation. Through this institutional capacity development, the availability of health services can be improved thus improving the conditions for achieving UHC.
GIZ Professional Programme for Health Protection
Under the Professional Programme for Health Protection, GIZ as per the request received from the State Health Agencies and National Health Authority recruits, trains and appoint consultants with various expertise including Health Financing, Medical, IT, Capacity Building, Finance, Programme Management etc in 13+ SHAs, NHA and other government stakeholder agencies. All the expenses of the consultant (Salary/fee and transportation outside State) are completely borne by GIZ. During the last phase of the programme, more than 60 consultants were appointed under this programme.
While under the programme, the professionals get an opportunity to learn on health financing and PM-JAY operational aspects first-hand from experts at national level. Periodic workshops are organised where implementation challenges are discussed and also serves as a platform for cross learning. The consultants are also taken to various parts of the country to learn various implementation models, success as well as failure stories.
The programme is designed in such a way that initial few months’ time is fully supported by GIZ. Beyond this period, if the State requires extended support from these experts, they have the flexibility and option to absorb these experts within SHA at their own cost, provided his/her contribution during the professional programme tenure is satisfactory to the State. This process saves the SHA time and resource in identifying and training the right personnel since this is completely supported by GIZ. States like Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Jammu & Kashmir have absorbed these professionals in past based on merit and performance.