No matter how hard one tries, it’s next to impossible to make sure that a doctor, or a nurse is in attendance every day between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. at a Primary Health Centre (PHC) in urban, rural or tribal settings. Then there is the big problem of lab investigations, because patients have to wait for at least a day to get test results and then meet the doctor again for consultation.
If the patient is lucky and avails all these facilities in a day, then there will be a definite ‘bottleneck’ at the pharmacy, as the health centre invariably runs out of medicine. Patients, quite often, end up spending from their pockets for lab tests and medicines, despite accessing a service, which carries the ‘Sarkari’ tag, but not prompt, punctual and humane.
This is how a typical State-run PHC or a Community Health Centre functions.
Saddled with such below par healthcare services, the Union Government under the National Health Mission (NHM), had on pilot basis launched ePHCs managed by a Hyderabad-based company, e-Vaidya. Under the project, the end-users i.e. patients will have a single window free access to physicians, lab investigations, digital X-Ray, pharmacy and in case the doctor is not present, then telemedicine services.
A pilot project is being launched in Telangana wherein four PHCs in remote areas will be managed by eVaidya. “We provided all basic medical services to patients in Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam in two PHCs for urban poor under the NHM project. The success of this pilot project has kindled interest among policymakers,” says COO, eVaidya, P.B.N. Choudhary.
Value-added services
Essentially, the NHM project envisages operating a PHC in urban, rural or tribal areas for just Rs. 3.64 lakh per month, which will be paid to the managing company by the Union Government. Apart from the basic medical services and diagnostics, such ePHCs do have value-added services like digitisation of ANM workflow, electronic medical records of patients, drug inventory management system and demographic-based health census. The staffing for such PHCs, including recruitment of doctors, paramedics, lab technicians and paying them salaries, will be completely handled by the private company.
Outreach programmes to be conducted
“Our workflow in PHCs is such that in one single-day, patients will be able to meet the doctor, collect lab investigations and also have access to free medicines. We are providing 63 lab investigations to patients at a PHC level. Apart from this, through ePHC, we also conduct outreach programmes like interacting and training ASHA workers by experts to improve community medicine,” says Associate Vice-President, e-Vaidya, Surender Kavali.
