Mumbai: Senior doctors back, non-Covid bed occupancy hits 85%

MUMBAI: After months of staying away, patients are returning to hospitals for non-Covid treatment in larger numbers even as senior doctors have resumed consultations. Occupancy of non-Covid beds in some hospitals has touched 85-90%, suggesting that fear of being infected is gradually receding and a greater confidence to visit hospitals for OPD consultations or surgeries is setting in.Joint replacements, heart surgeries and angioplasties are increasing in number.
Despite manpower crunch, hosps have waiting period for non-Covid patients
82-year-old Dr Dev Pahlajani, one of the seniormost interventional cardiologists in India who resumed consultations at Breach Candy Hospital and his clinic a month ago, said, “Both patients and doctors are more aware and confident of the preventive measures to be taken.”
Despite manpower crunch, hospitals are nearly running to capacity. The uptick in non-Covid services is across both public and private hospitals.
At KEM Hospital, daily count of surgeries has reached 150-160 after dropping to single digits in March to June. The pre-Covid number was almost 250. Daily OPD footfall too has started to breach 4,000-4,300 now. Though it’s only 50% of the OPD load seen in pre-Covid times, numbers are much higher than seen till July-August. The hospital is also carrying out a minimum of 20 deliveries everyday now.
Dean Dr Hemant Deshmukh said non-Covid procedures have shot up since the early months of the pandemic. “Covid is still here so it may be a while before things normalise completely, but there is an increase no doubt in non-Covid footfall,” he said. Patients are walking in for heart surgeries, angioplasties and angiographies, and joint replacements..
A similar pattern is now emerging even in smaller, private facilities. Surgeon Dr Lalit Kapoor and his wife, both in their 70s, resumed work gradually after patients kept showing up at their nursing home in Andheri, which is in the same premises as their residence. “These are people we have known for generations. So, when they come with a wound or an acute pain, we cannot say no,” he said. “I have started performing around 2-4 surgeries a month from nil,” he said. His wife, who is a senior paediatrician has seen a huge rise in demand for vaccination services.
At bigger hospitals such as Lilavati Hospital, there is, in fact, a waiting period of a few hours for a non-Covid bed. The 200 non-Covid beds here are running to capacity and the management plans to add another 20. “We are performing upto 15-20 major surgeries in a day now,” said Dr V Ravishankar, CEO of Lilavati. Heart, orthopaedic, gastroenteric, neurological and cancer surgeries are being carried out regularly. The hospital now has 25% vacant Covid beds.
Doctors say initially when the lockdown was eased in June, footfalls were relatively less, giving rise to fears of increase in non-Covid deaths. TOI had reported how the city experienced a sharp rise in fatalities from all causes between March and September 2020 compared to the same year-ago period. Deaths in 2020 are 26-30% more compared to 2019 and 2018 and Covid accounts for only around 50% of the additional number.
“That fear of stepping into a hospital is gradually reducing. We saw a sudden jump in admissions in the past few weeks when positive cases fell significantly,” said Dr Rohinton Dastur, director medical of Bhatia Hospital. Doctors at Dr LH Hiranandani Hospital, Powai concurred that there’s been a steady rise in non-Covid services. “We presently have 50% occupancy of non-Covid beds,” said Dr Manish Gupta, medical director.
However, some hospitals are still operating only on urgent cases. Orthopaedic surgeon Dr Pradeep Bhonsale, who consults with Nanavati Hospital, said they operate only on cases where patients are in pain or are rendered immobile. “We still don’t want to congest, so we are only taking cases that can’t wait,” he said. Still, over 85% of the hospital’s non-Covid beds are occupied, said Manpreet Sohal, director of Nanavati.
Others like Dr Pahlajani, who has carried out about a dozen angioplasties and angiographies in the past 30 days, are ensuring adequate precautions are taken to reduce risk of exposure. Dr Pahlajani said Breach Candy’s catheterisation lab replaces its team every two weeks after a non-stop stint during which they don’t leave the premises.
Dr Kapoor, who runs a 15-bed hospital in Andheri, however, said the manpower crunch remains a stumbling block and many small and mid-level hospitals are not running optimally. Dr Dastur agreed that after the exodus of nurses, Bhatia Hospital has been able to operationalise only 100 of their 195 beds.