Summary of studies on VAS
| Outcome | Findings | |
| Sood et al8 | Mortality | Among households below the poverty line, the mortality rate from conditions potentially responsive to services covered by the scheme (mostly cardiac conditions and cancer) was 0.32% in households eligible for the scheme compared with 0.90% among ineligible households just south of the eligibility border (difference of 0.58 percentage points, 95% CI 0.40 to 0.75; P<0.001). |
| Sood et al8 | Financial well-being | 60% fewer OOP expenditures for hospitalisations covered by VAS. |
| Barnes et al13 | Financial well-being | VAS reduced catastrophic expenditures. At the median, the reduction in OOP was 2879 rupees (US$43) whereas the reduction at the 75th and 95th percentiles was 4484 rupees (US$67) and 23 548 rupees (US$353), respectively. |
| Sood et al8 | Utilisation | VAS eligible households were over 40% more likely to report a hospitalisation for a condition covered by VAS at a tertiary care facility. Moreover, eligible households were 35% less likely to report unmet need for medical care for a serious illness. |
| Sood and Wagner10 | Quality of care | VAS eligible respondents reported greater improvements in well-being after hospitalisation. VAS respondents who were hospitalised reported 88% fewer posthospitalisation infections were 48% less likely to report needing to be rehospitalised after the initial hospitalisation than VAS ineligible respondents who were hospitalised. |
| Sood et al13 | Appropriateness of care | 86.7% of cases were deemed appropriate and only 3.7% of cases were deemed inappropriate. |
| Sood and Wagner10 | Seeking care for symptoms | VAS eligible respondents were 7% more likely to seek care for symptoms than non-eligible respondents, particularly for cardiac and cancer symptoms. |
| Basu et al9 | Cost-effectiveness | Adding tertiary treatment to primary prevention prevented 6.6 million DALYs at an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of $2241 per DALY averted, when compared with that of primary prevention alone. |
DALY, disability-adjusted life-year; OOP, out of pocket; VAS, Vajpayee Arogyashree scheme.