In a few months, if you friend or relative has a cardiac arrest or an accident, there would be no need to run around looking for a bed in the intensive care units (ICUs) in hospitals across the city. Just call a toll-free number to find out the availability of beds and go straight there.
The Karnataka Health Systems Commission (KSHC) will launch Mission Arogya Bengaluru that will compile the database of emergency care availability across private and government hospitals in the city to ensure better availability and management.
Commission Chairperson N. Prabhu Dev said the mission’s objective was to ensure quick availability of emergency care in order to save lives. “There are several lives lost due to delay in treatment of head injuries, cardiac arrests and trauma injuries. People run around in search of vacant beds in ICUs in various hospitals. This database will help in finding timely treatment.”
Golden hour
Dr. Prabhu Dev said there was a shortage of ICU beds in the city and the commission was carrying out a survey to check the number of trauma patients in the city who didn’t get access to health services within the golden hour. “A large number cardiac patients and those with head injuries don’t get access to healthcare within the first hour. Traffic chaos in the city makes the situation worse. This mission will help patients to avail timely treatment as soon as possible.”
Linked to 108
To make the process more effective, the software will also be linked to the 108 ambulance services. Apart from that this will also be linked to blood banks. “The entire system will be computerised and blood products such as WBC, RBC will have a barcode so that it can be tracked using the software.”
Availability of beds will be publicised on a day-to-day basis via SMS. The project would be started on a pilot basis in the next three or four months in Bangalore and would be rolled over to other cities subsequently.
A portion of the Rs. 3-crore budget has been set aside for the KSHC.
