Rajiv Aarogyasri Health Insurance Scheme (Telangana)

What is the Rajiv Aarogyasri scheme?

Rajiv Aarogyasri is the Government of Telangana's health insurance programme for poor families, administered by the Aarogyasri Health Care Trust under the Health, Medical and Family Welfare Department. The Trust describes the scheme in its own words as "a health insurance program initiated by the Government of Telangana to provide quality healthcare to the poor", covering "major surgeries and treatments for serious ailments, ensuring financial protection and access to modern medical facilities for families living below the poverty line".

The scheme's design rests on three ideas that the Trust states explicitly:

• Catastrophic illness cover. The Trust was established to assist Below Poverty Line families suffering from catastrophic illnesses by providing access to specialist care and financial protection. It is not a scheme for routine outpatient care.
• Cashless treatment. The Trust partners with government and private hospitals to deliver cashless treatment, so the money moves between the hospital and the Trust rather than out of the patient's pocket.
• Transparency and equitable access. The Trust states the scheme operates "with a focus on transparency, efficiency, and equitable healthcare access".

The scheme carries the name Rajiv Aarogyasri from its origin in the undivided state, and Telangana continued and rebuilt it after the state was formed in 2014. Telugu speakers usually refer to it simply as Aarogyasri, and that is the name used on the health card, at hospital help desks and in the Trust's own branding.

Who is eligible for Rajiv Aarogyasri?

Below Poverty Line families in Telangana can use the scheme. The Aarogyasri Health Care Trust states that the Government established it to assist BPL families suffering from catastrophic illnesses, and that the scheme provides financial protection and access to modern medical facilities for families living below the poverty line. In practice, entitlement follows the family's identification in the state's own BPL and ration-card records, not a separate means test at the hospital.

Families who are not identified as Below Poverty Line by the Government of Telangana are not eligible under this scheme. Telangana operates a separate health cover for its own employees, pensioners and journalists, so a state government employee's family is dealt with under that arrangement rather than under Rajiv Aarogyasri.

Two further practical limits follow from the scheme's design rather than from any income rule:

• The treatment must be on the Trust's approved list. Aarogyasri pays for listed surgeries and treatments for serious ailments. A procedure that is not on the list is not covered, however genuine the need.
• The hospital must be empanelled. Cashless settlement only works at government and private hospitals that the Trust has taken into its network. A patient who goes to a non-network hospital pays privately.

How to apply for and use Rajiv Aarogyasri

Rajiv Aarogyasri has no application form and no application fee. It is an entitlement that is activated at the point of treatment. The steps are:

1. Confirm that your family is on the state's Below Poverty Line record. The family's ration card and Aadhaar are what link the patient to the entitlement. If the family is not on the record, that has to be corrected first through the civil supplies route.
2. Go to an empanelled hospital, government or private, with the family's ration card, the patient's Aadhaar and any Aarogyasri health card the Government of Telangana has issued to the family. Ask at the hospital's Aarogyasri help desk before admission, not after.
3. Let the hospital raise the case with the Aarogyasri Health Care Trust. The hospital submits the diagnosis and the proposed procedure for approval; once the Trust approves it, the treatment is delivered cashless and the hospital is paid by the Trust.
4. Keep every discharge paper. The discharge summary and the approval reference are what you need if a follow-up procedure or a post-operative review has to be claimed later.
5. Escalate to the Trust directly if a network hospital refuses or demands money, using the head office numbers below. Demanding cash from an Aarogyasri patient for a covered procedure defeats the purpose of the scheme.

How much does Rajiv Aarogyasri pay?

The cover available per family per year is fixed by the Government of Telangana by order and has been revised more than once since the scheme began. Because the figure is a policy number that changes, confirm the limit currently in force with the Aarogyasri Health Care Trust or with the Aarogyasri desk at your empanelled hospital before you rely on it. An amount quoted on a news site or in an older article may be out of date.

What does not change is the mechanism. The benefit is not a cash payment to the family. It is the cost of an approved procedure, settled directly between the Trust and the empanelled hospital under package rates that the Trust fixes. That is why patients do not see a rupee figure at all in a normal Aarogyasri case: they see a pre-authorisation approval and a zero bill.

Where do you get help with Aarogyasri?

• Aarogyasri Health Care Trust head office: D.No. 8-2-293/82a/ahct, Road No. 46, Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad 500033.
• Telephone: 040-23547107, and the mobile numbers 8333817459, 8333817415 and 8333815901.
• Administration and HR: the Trust lists its Executive Officer (Administration and HR), Dr M. Ram Rathod, at 040-23457107 and 8333815906.
• Official portal: aarogyasri.telangana.gov.in, which carries the current procedure list, the empanelled hospital list and the coverage limit in force.
• Department: Health, Medical and Family Welfare Department, Government of Telangana, at health.telangana.gov.in.

Rajiv Aarogyasri costs a beneficiary family nothing. No hospital, agent or middleman is authorised to charge a fee for "getting Aarogyasri approval", and any demand for cash in a covered case should be reported to the Trust on the numbers above.

A note on figures in this guide

Every fact stated above is taken from the Aarogyasri Health Care Trust's own site and the Telangana Health, Medical and Family Welfare Department site. Where a number could not be confirmed on an official Telangana source — specifically the current annual cover per family, the count of covered procedures and the count of empanelled hospitals, this guide deliberately does not state one. Check aarogyasri.telangana.gov.in or call the Trust for those three figures.

How to check your application status

Rajiv Aarogyasri does not use a submitted-and-waiting application, so there is no tracking number to look up the way you would for a pension or scholarship. What you can actually check falls into three stages, and each has its own contact point.

Before admission: checking whether your family is recorded as Below Poverty Line. Entitlement under Aarogyasri rides on the family's existing BPL and ration-card record, not on a fresh Aarogyasri form, so the thing to verify first is that record itself.

• Ask at your local civil supplies office (the ration card issuing authority) whether the family is currently listed as BPL.
• Carry the ration card and Aadhaar to any empanelled hospital's Aarogyasri help desk before admission; the desk staff can check on the spot whether the family shows up as eligible in the Trust's system, which is faster than a separate enquiry.

During treatment: checking the status of a case the hospital has raised. Once a hospital admits a patient and raises a case with the Aarogyasri Health Care Trust for pre-authorisation, the case moves through the Trust's approval system before treatment proceeds as cashless. The patient or family does not log into a portal to track this themselves; instead:

• Ask the hospital's Aarogyasri coordinator or help desk directly, since the hospital is the party that submitted the case and can see its status (pending, approved, or queried) in the Trust's system.
• If the hospital cannot give a clear answer or the case has been pending an unusual length of time, call the Aarogyasri Health Care Trust head office on 040-23547107 or the mobile numbers 8333817459, 8333817415 or 8333815901, quoting the patient's name, the hospital and the date of admission.

After discharge: checking a claim tied to a discharge summary. For any follow-up procedure, post-operative review, or a dispute over what was or was not covered, the discharge summary and the approval reference the hospital gave at the time are the two documents the Trust will ask for. Keep both, and quote the approval reference number (not just the patient's name) when calling the Trust, since that reference is what lets the Trust's staff pull up the specific case rather than search by name alone.

There is no SMS-based status check and no separate online applicant login for Rajiv Aarogyasri; the official portal, aarogyasri.telangana.gov.in, is where the Trust publishes the procedure list, empanelled hospital list and coverage limit, not a case-tracking tool for individual families. For anything specific to one patient's case, the hospital's Aarogyasri desk and the Trust's helpline numbers are the two real channels.

Common reasons for rejection

Because Aarogyasri approval happens at the pre-authorisation stage rather than through a form a family fills in, "rejection" in practice means the Trust or the hospital's Aarogyasri desk declines to treat a case as covered. The specific, recurring reasons are:

• The family is not recorded as Below Poverty Line. Since eligibility rides entirely on the state's existing BPL and ration-card records, a family that is not on that list is turned away regardless of financial hardship or medical need. The fix is to get the BPL/ration-card status corrected through the civil supplies department first; there is no Aarogyasri-side appeal that can override a ration card record.
• The procedure is not on the Trust's approved list. Aarogyasri covers listed major surgeries and treatments for serious ailments, and a treatment outside that list is not paid for no matter how necessary it is. Before committing to a procedure, ask the hospital's Aarogyasri desk to confirm in writing whether the specific procedure code is on the current list, rather than assuming coverage.
• The hospital is not empanelled with the Trust. Cashless settlement only works at hospitals the Trust has taken into its network; a case raised from, or treatment already taken at, a non-network hospital cannot be reimbursed as Aarogyasri afterwards. Confirm empanelment status at the Aarogyasri help desk, or on the official portal's hospital list, before admission, not after.
• Treatment was taken before pre-authorisation was raised or approved. Because the mechanism depends on the hospital submitting the diagnosis and proposed procedure to the Trust for approval ahead of treatment, a case where the family paid privately and only sought Aarogyasri cover afterwards is generally outside how the scheme is designed to work. Insist that the hospital raise the case with the Trust before admission proceeds, not as an afterthought.
• Aadhaar or ration card details do not match hospital records. A mismatch between the name or details on the Aadhaar card and the ration card can hold up a case at the verification stage. Carrying both documents and having the hospital desk check them against each other before admission avoids this becoming a last-minute hold-up.
• The illness or procedure falls outside the scheme's catastrophic-illness scope. Aarogyasri was built for major surgeries and serious ailments, not routine outpatient care, so a request for cover of ordinary consultations or minor treatment is declined as outside scope rather than rejected on a technicality.

In every one of these situations, the corrective step lies with either the civil supplies department (for BPL/ration card status) or the Aarogyasri Health Care Trust and its empanelled hospital network (for procedure and hospital coverage questions), and a family that believes a case was wrongly declined should raise it directly with the Trust on 040-23547107 rather than assume the decision is final.