Online option for patients
2 min readPatna: The state government is working on a plan that entails online registration of patients in government hospitals.
Presently, this work is done manually. Patients need to queue up at the hospital concerned to register themselves for availing the outdoor patient department facilities.
Patients just need to pay Rs 5 in urban government hospitals and Rs 2 for rural government hospitals as registration fee.
The proposed system will rid the patients from the hassle of queuing up and also, those opting for the online route of registration would not have to pay the registration fee.
“At present, around 40,000 to 50000 patients avail the OPD facilities in 700 and odd government hospitals in Bihar. Even if one takes into account the Rs 5 registration fee and assumes that all pay this much, the state government would hardly lose some over Rs 3.5 crore as registration fee. But it would bring great relief to the patients who have to stand in queue for getting themselves registered,” a source in the state government told The Telegraph.
The source said the process of introducing the online registration facility would not be much cumbersome as even in the existing system, all government hospitals provide online date about patients’ registration on a daily basis so the connectivity of hospitals was not an issue.
“We would provide a link on the health department website for this facility and those registering themselves using this facility, would get an option of downloading the registration slip which would be used at the time of the hospital visit,” added the source.
The proposed system is likely to be introduced latest by August 15. The source also revealed that in the long-run, there was a plan to have online record of indoor patients as well. At present, the state headquarters has no mechanism to keep tabs about the occupancy of indoor patients in different hospitals.
“This record would not only usher in complete transparency in providing indoor services to the patients as per the norms, it would also help the government in keeping tabs on the type of medical cases that are occurring in many parts of the state,” said the source.
He explained that in case a given hospital is not receiving much of the cases related to eyes, then the available eye specialists could be posted in those hospitals where number of such cases would be on the higher side.
Courtesy: The Telegraph
