Launched at the end of December 2023 under the country’s L4UHC programme, the Collective Action Initiatives are addressing a range of issues intended to improve public health service delivery and the sustainability of health insurance schemes in three states in India – Himachal Pradesh, Kerala and Punjab, and the union territory of Jammu & Kashmir.

Key advances include:

• Jammu and Kashmir have increased the number of major elective procedures in eight district and sub-district public hospitals by 80%, relative to the monthly average for 2023, against a target of doubling those procedures across 12 hospitals by April 2024.
• Himachal Pradesh aims to halve the number of inactive HIMCARE membership cards in four districts from 159,000 to 80,000. So far, it has cut that number by 10,000 through a variety of initiatives, including advising district officials on how to persuade beneficiaries to voluntarily reactivate their cards.
• Punjab is committed to providing all eligible UHC beneficiaries with e-cards to access services, reflected in its drive to reduce the number of beneficiaries without e-cards from 8.1 million to 4.5 million. That number is now down to 7.7 million, thanks to a door-to-door campaign to generate e-cards and other activities.
• Kerala’s goal is to reduce average waiting time for dialysis patients by 20% in KASP-empanelled centres in Trivandrum, Alappuzha, Kottayam, Kannur, and Thrissur. A methodology for tracking and monitoring KASP-empanelled dialysis patients on waiting lists has been developed, and primary data for establishing a baseline collected.