No retrieval of old cases

SOURAV SANYAL
CHANDIGARH: Union health minister Shatrughan Sinha''s vision appears to have gone haywire.
What was conceived to bring relief to office-goers and daily wage-earners alike, is, however, likely do little to ease their problems.
Going by what PGI authorities have planned, patients, who till date had to skip work to come to the morning OPD, will have little to look forward to once the evening OPD becomes functional from Monday.
This is because patients, who may be working otherwise but are already under medication as advised by consultants at the morning OPD, would not be entertained in the evening OPD.
At a meeting of hospital officers held on November 26, it had been decided that "there will be no retrieval of old patients'' records". Hence, all hopes of being able to work during the day and return to the doctor in the evening for a follow-up, would remain a dream after all.
The meeting was held in light of the minutes of a special staff council meeting held on November 11 to find out the "logistics" for running the evening OPD.
Despite repeated attempts, PGI director S K Sharma could not be contacted. Senior faculty members told Times News Network, "Non retrieval of old patient records virtually means that old patients will have no place at the evening OPD. This is because the central registration department, which maintains records of all indoor and outdoor patients, shuts after the OPD closes in the morning except in the case of emergency."
In each registration counter attached to the respective departmental OPD, there are two windows — one for new cases and the other for old cases. When a patient presents his OPD card at the "old" counter, the card, along with the "case history sheet", is forwarded to the doctor.
As per the hospital officers'' decision, this facility will not be available in the evening and so old patients would have to return in the morning as earlier.
But this does not mean that new patients too would be saved of inconvenience. "The evening OPD is an eyewash. PGI calls it an experimental screening OPD where the patients would merely be examined by the doctor. However, in the absence of support from paramedical staff, no clinical examinations, including routine tests like urine culture, haemoglobin and X-rays, would be conducted in the evening.
This means that even for those coming to the evening OPD, a visit to the morning OPD would be a must for getting the tests done," observed a senior doctor.