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Maharashtra to empanel 2,767 health centres under MJPJAY scheme
Maharashtra's MJPJAY scheme will add 2,767 health centers, cover costly transplants, and enhance healthcare access, with changes effective in weeks.
In a major overhaul of the Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Jan Arogya Yojana (MJPJAY), the Maharashtra government will empanel 2,767 Primary Health Centres (PHCs) and Urban Primary Health Centres (UPHCs) under the scheme and operationalise a special corpus fund to cover high-cost procedures such as heart, liver and bone marrow transplants.
The process will be completed within the next two weeks, officials said.
The PHCs are run by the public health department, and UPHCs are run by the municipal corporations. At present, MJPJAY and PM-JAY have 2,481 empanelled hospitals, nearly 1,800 of them private. With the inclusion of 2,767 PHCs and UPHCs, the total number will be increased to 5,248 and beneficiaries will be able to access treatment closer to their homes.
In 2023, the state government revamped the MJPJAY scheme, making it universal and increasing the medical treatment coverage from ₹1.5 lakh to ₹5 lakh. Under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY), beneficiaries are provided with coverage of up to ₹5 lakh per year for each family. Maharashtra administers both schemes in an integrated manner. In November 2025, the state increased the number of health procedures covered under the scheme from 1,352 to 2,399.
“Basic services at UPHCs are either free or available at nominal cost, but many advanced services are outsourced, and patients often have to pay out of pocket. Empanelment will ease this burden and strengthen primary healthcare,” said a senior official from State Health Assurance Society, on request of anonymity.
Corpus fund for costly procedures
Previously, in October 2025, the state government had announced the creation of a dedicated corpus fund to finance rare and expensive procedures. The approved procedures include heart transplant, lung transplant, heart and lung transplant, liver transplant, bone marrow transplant (allogenic, unrelated and haplo), transcatheter aortic valve implantation and transcatheter mitral valve replacement.
Under the corpus mechanism, 20% of claims of government empanelled hospitals will be retained as reserve funds and 80% paid to hospitals after approval by the special treatment assistance committee.
Furthermore, to improve transparency and curb fraud, the entire scheme is being shifted to an advanced Transaction Management System (TMS) portal. Trials were conducted last week in 25 hospitals, and over 2,500 hospitals will be brought onto the platform from February 9.
Dayanand Jagtap, deputy chief executive officer, State Health Assurance Society, said the corpus fund would soon become operational. “The SOP for the corpus fund will be finalised shortly, and treatments will begin thereafter. The TMS system is user-friendly and will bring uniformity for the PM-JAY scheme that has unique features like anti-fraud. With the addition of more facilities, citizens will be able to avail treatment even at PHCs and UPHCs near their homes,” he said.
He added that the government had already kept over ₹15 crore in the corpus fund and that revenue generated at PHCs and UPHCs could be used to upgrade facilities.
Dr Omprakash Shete, head of the Ayushman Bharat Mission Maharashtra committee, said, “PHCs have been included, and packages expanded from 1,300 to 2,399. Transplant procedures will now be covered with the corpus fund. The changes will be implemented across the state in a couple of weeks. A final review meeting will be held on February 11 to finalise the rollout.
