LTMG services get a high-tech fillip

MUMBAI, July 20: In a bid to gear up the efficiency of interdepartmental services, the LTMG hospital at Sion will soon introduce a Local Ar...

MUMBAI, July 20: In a bid to gear up the efficiency of interdepartmental services, the LTMG hospital at Sion will soon introduce a Local Area Network LAN , the first of its kind in a municipal hospital.

With the introduction of LAN, pathology test reports will be easier to submit, access and record, says Dr R G Shirahhati, dean of Sion hospital. This will also streamline manual work load and the wait period will be considerably reduced.

Cable work is already in progress and the project will become functional in a couple of months. There will be two main servers, says the dean and the project will be implemented phase wise with 37 terminals being procured for the first phase.

The hospital8217;s six pathology laboratories, the microbiology department, the blood bank, the X-Ray department and 17 emergency areas, besides operation theatres and the registration counter will be equipped with terminals in the first stage. The second stage will include the general wards and finally, the store department in the third stage.

quot;With computerised registration, all a doctor has to do is quote the indoor number of a patient while requisitioning a report, the allied details become redundant,quot; informs the dean.

Shirahhati, who took over as dean over a year back is quite confident that his efforts will not fail.

While only about 30 per cent of the staff is computer literate, he is quick to add that many have volunteered to undergo training. Two computers at the hospital library have been made available for the purpose. The dean has already introduced a centralised blood sample collection system.

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Earlier, it took the ward boy two hours to collect and submit samples. The situation is aggravated by the fact that the number of ward boys is no longer proportionate to the patient occupancy of the ward and the increased workload. Meanwhile, the LTMG hospital is in for some more innovative changes under the guidance of the new dean. Two borewells dug in the hospital8217;s premises are expected to be the new source of water. Having visited a water treatment and purification plant, the dean felt, quot;It was a sheer waste to literally flush out gallons of pure water down the guttersquot;, and thus only the well water will be used for the hospital toilets.

The 1400-bed hospital has a 90 per cent occupancy at any given time, claims Shirahhati and visits reveal that the 40-bed orthopedic ward has a 200 per cent occupancy. The patients, mostly accident victims, are accommodated on the floor in addition to 18 beds placed in an adjacent corridor which acts as an extended ward. To ease the load on the hospital, he plans to propose the use of an urban health centre at Dharavi where a large number of unoccupied wards can be utilised as cold orthopedic surgery unit. Meanwhile, dean of BYL Nair hospital Dr KD Nihalani said she is planning to emulate the Sion example of introducing a LAN.