NHA inks MoU with National Cancer Grid to develop uniform standards of cancer patient care

NCG and NHA officials met in New Delhi recently to discuss their new partnership on a wide range of ideas to improve cancer care.

"The main objectives of this collaboration include developing uniform standards of patient care for prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer, providing specialized training and education in oncology and facilitating collaborative basic, translational and clinical research in cancer.

"NHA and NCG will jointly review existing cancer treatment packages, pricing of services, standard treatment workflows covered under AB-PMJAY and plug in necessary gaps to ensure enhanced quality of cancer care," the statement stated.

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On this new partnership, NHA CEO Indu Bhushan said, "We are glad to partner with National Cancer Grid and welcome their expertise in enhancing the cancer care services provided under the scheme. We look forward to NCG's support and expertise in enabling us to expand our service delivery network by actively encouraging its member hospitals to empanel with AB-PMJAY."

The PMJAY is the flagship scheme of the government which aims at providing a cover of up to Rs 5 lakh per family per year, for secondary and tertiary care hospitalisation to over 10.74 crore vulnerable entitled families (approximately 50 crore beneficiaries).

PMJAY provides cashless and paperless access to services for the beneficiary at the point of service. According to health ministry, it will help reduce catastrophic expenditure for hospitalizations, which impoverishes six crore people each year and will help mitigate the financial risk arising out of catastrophic health episodes.