CMCH all set to become a 2,000-bed facility this year

The Coimbatore Medical College Hospital (CMCH) is all set to become a 2,000-bed facility this year. The Rs. 57 crore-centenary building, with five blocks, will accommodate around 1,000 beds besides six modern operation theatres and several super speciality departments. It is likely to be commissioned in April.

The Public Works Department (Medical Wing) began construction of the extended facility on October 18, 2012. The CMCH is the tertiary referral centre for several Western districts and even border districts of Kerala such as Palakkad. It treats anywhere between 7,000 and 8,000 outpatients every day besides the 1,200-odd in-patients.

Hospital Dean S. Revwathy says shifting the casualty, zero-delay accident, trauma and toxicology wards/departments besides Intensive Medical and Coronary Care Units to the new building will be a priority.

The new building will also have the infrastructure to facilitate organ transplantations. It requires two operation theatres, one to remove the organ and another to transplant it, with the facilities located adjacent to each other. Conducting organ transplantation at CMCH has been a long-time demand of people of this region since only the private hospitals in Coimbatore performed complicated procedures. CMCH doctors had the expertise but only infrastructure, additional manpower and Government permission was lacking.

It is also likely to accommodate some of the new super speciality departments that have been sought by the CMCH. These include surgical gastroenterology, vascular surgery, medical oncology, rheumatology and endocrinology (surgical and medical). It will also have provisions to accommodate a catheterisation laboratory, the Dean added.

Further, the hospital has sought an increase in manpower in the Neuro-Surgery Department, which has only two assistant surgeons to perform emergency operations, said Dr. Revwathy.