More patient-friendly steps at PGI: Token system at OPDs, information kiosks in buildings

To help thousands of patients who have to stand in queues at OPDs, the IT section is planning to implement a token system. “The patients will be issued token numbers after the registration. The token numbers will be displayed on digital display boards placed outside the OPDs. The patients can sit and wait for their turn,” said Professor Y L Narayana, vice-chairman of the Computerisation Monitoring Committee.

At present, the patients wait outside the doctor’s office, without any clue when their turn will come. They keep barging into the doctor’s cabin and at times lose their cool.

“Under ADT (Admission, discharge and transfer) module, nurses in all 77 wards have been keeping an electronic track of patients. There is an electronic record of patients from the point of admission, acceptance in the wards, transfer from one ward to another, until their discharge,” said Naveen Bindra, a system analyst.

In order to make it patient-friendly, the institute is planning to place information kiosks in all buildings. From these kiosks, people could get information about the doctors’ rooms, location of patients in the wards, the services available and hospital charges, Bindra said.

“Besides, an SMS facility will be soon introduced for informing patients when their reports are ready to be accessed from the web. Print-on-demand facility will be available in the OPDs,” he added.

The institute also intends to connect all radio-diagnosis machines to the network in order to give access to MRI and CT scan images in OPDs which is going to help doctors in better patient management. “It will also allow access to these radio-diagnostic images on smart phones,” Bindra said.