Now, book OPD appointments in advance at AIIMS

The pilot phase of the project began at the Rajkumari Amrit Kaur (RAK) OPD, the main general OPD of the hospital, a month ago. Patients can make appointments to consult specialists of key departments such as medicine, gynaecology, skin, surgery and gastroenterology.

Dr Deepak Agrawal, consultant in neurosurgery and the in-charge of the project, said, “We were all very sceptical in the beginning. We thought appointments would run into months. There was also the fear that since this is a government set-up, patients might not turn up despite booking appointments.”

Initial assessments have, however, shown that the fears were misplaced. “We have succeeded in cutting the crowd outside the RAK OPD by half… our analysis shows that only about 50 patients are waiting outside the hospital during peak hours — a near impossibility for AIIMS. The trend of patients collecting since wee hours — 2-3 am — has been controlled,” Dr Agrawal said.

The patient intake in different departments in the RAK OPD has increased by 150 per cent to accommodate those with appointments.

“There is still a 30-40 per cent drop-out rate in scheduled appointments. Every department has increased its patient intake by 150 per cent. So the medicine department, which saw 500 patients a day, is now seeing 750. If patients with appointments drop out, we take spot appointments,” a doctor said.

About 50 per cent of the total patients seen by a department are already through prior appointments. “If this number increases further, as we expect it to, we will reserve 25 per cent slots for spot appointments,” Dr Agrawal said.

For laboratory appointments, time slots are now available for a maximum of two days. In laboratories, 450 samples are being tested every day, including those with appointments. “The chaos outside the laboratory has been managed and we have increased our numbers through optimisation of resources,” he said.

Doctors said if the success of the project continues through summer, then the appointment system will be expanded to specialised centres of AIIMS, including the Institute Rotary Cancer Hospital (IRCH), and the Cardio-Neuro (CN) Centre.

Cutting the queue

The new system allows patients to schedule appointments up to a week in advance

Dedicated counters for registering doctor appointments and scheduling laboratory tests are functional from 8.30 am to 3.30 pm on working days

Patients are issued tokens with the time slot and date of the appointment on it.

The pilot phase of the project began at the Rajkumari Amrit Kaur OPD a month ago

AIIMS, AIIMS computerised appointment system, RAK, OPD, city news