Coronavirus in Kerala: How equipped are our pvt hospitals?

KOCHI: The

state government

has asked all private hospitals to keep rooms ready to admit patients if there is

Covid-19

community

outbreak

. District collectors of all districts held separate meetings with private hospital managements and informed them that they need to keep the rooms ready to treat any Covid-19 patient who comes to the hospital.

Now, the private hospitals are in the process of setting up isolation rooms either in a block or floor of the hospital. Depending on the total number of rooms, the hospitals are keeping 2 to 20 isolation rooms ready. They are ensuring that separate entrance and lift are made available to the isolation rooms and the area where the isolation rooms will be set up has been quarantined. Some of the 500-plus bedded hospitals have kept two-three negative pressure rooms ready.

In each hospital, there is a Covid-19 crisis management team consisting of doctors and managers who prepare contingency plans. They have been trained to handle

isolation wards

and are provided with personal protection equipment. Just like in the ICU, in the isolation room, the hospitals plan to maintain nurse-patient ratio of 1:1. The staff in the isolation will be posted for maximum 6 hours in a day.

However, many small and medium private hospitals have raised

concerns

of lack of adequate personal protection equipment. “Many private hospitals don’t have adequate personal protection equipment and therefore, we have written to the respective district medical officers to provide the same,” said Kerala Private Hospital Association president Dr P K Mohamed Rasheed.

Incidentally, though the district collectors during the meetings have made it clear that a person who comes to them with Covid-19 symptoms should be treated in the hospital and not shifted to a government hospital, there is some apprehension. “Most of our hospitals don’t have the facility or infrastructure to treat critical cases of Covid-19. Such patients we will have to shift to government medical colleges,” added Dr Rasheed.

Who will bear the cost of treatment in private hospitals is another issue. Though some private hospitals had raised doubt over the cost involved for treating patients, there was no further discussion on it.

“Government authorities have informed us that they would be first utilizing the government facilities. Once that’s filled up, then we will need to admit patients and we are ready for it,” said VPS Lakeshore CEO S K Abdulla.

“At the moment, there is no patient load and therefore, if government facilities are exhausted, we can admit Covid-19 patients in our hospitals,” said Dr K G Alexander, chairman, Baby Memorial Hospital, Kozhikode.

Meanwhile, some of the hospitals have identified separate hostels where staff can be quarantined in case they do get infected. “We have kept a facility with 60 beds ready to accommodate our doctors and medical staff if they need to be quarantined,” said Dr M I Sahadulla, chairman and managing director, KIMS Healthcare Group.