Mumbai: Lack of staffers big hurdle to resume services, say pvt hospitals

A doctor from Breach Candy hospital, meanwhile, said several of their staffers are living in COVID-19 hotspots and could not travel to work. The hospital currently is running emergency medical care but its out-patient department (OPD) is operating on skeletal staff.

Several administrators from the private hospitals also claimed that a major hurdle was to convince hospital nurses, ward boys, and housekeeping staff to report to work. “The government has asked hospitals to pay staffers even if they remain at home during the lockdown. Since they will get their salary, most have refused to report to work,” a medical director from a south Mumbai-based private hospital said.

At Jaslok hospital, the OPD has been shut, but admissions for emergency treatment and surgery have continued. “We are not doing elective surgeries as of now. Normal OPD will take time too,” a hospital official said. For elective surgeries, the official said, a patient has to be tested first for COVID-19 before admission. In the past, asymptomatic patients admitted for other illnesses had become a source of infection in the city’s top hospitals, including Wockhardt, Bhatia, Jaslok, and Hinduja Hospital (Khar). Doctors also said there was a need to segregate hospitals into COVID and non-COVID facilities to ensure coronavirus-infected patients were not admitted at hospitals where patients with other illnesses were being treated.