The Ayushman Bharat Health and Wellness Centres (AB-HWCs) are a scheme/institution representing the first of two complementary pillars of the overarching Ayushman Bharat programme. The concept originated from the National Health Policy 2017, which recommended strengthening primary care to achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and committed two-thirds of the health budget to this level of care. The scheme was announced in the Union Budget of February 2018 to solve the problem of a selective primary healthcare approach and high Out-of-Pocket Expenditure (OOPE), and the first centre was operationalised on April 14, 2018, in Jangla, Chhattisgarh.
The mechanism involves transforming existing Sub-Centres (SHCs) and Primary Health Centres (PHCs) into AB-HWCs to deliver Comprehensive Primary Health Care (CPHC). These centres provide an expanded range of services, including maternal and child health, management of communicable diseases, and population-based screening for non-communicable diseases like hypertension, diabetes, and common cancers. Key provisions include providing free essential drugs and diagnostic services and using teleconsultation via the eSanjeevani platform to link peripheral centres to specialists.
The AB-HWCs are administered by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare through the National Health Mission (NHM) and operationalise the constitutional Directive Principle under Article 47. They connect directly to the second pillar of the programme, the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY), which provides secondary and tertiary hospitalisation cover. Furthermore, they integrate with the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDHM), launched in 2021, for creating Ayushman Bharat Health Accounts (ABHA identifiers). A significant recent change occurred in November 2023, when the centres were officially renamed Ayushman Arogya Mandir with the tagline 'Arogyam Parmam Dhanam', though their core function of delivering CPHC remains the same.