Public health specialist Manas Pratim Roy from the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), New Delhi, on Tuesday visited Coimbatore Medical College Hospital (CMCH) to know more about the hospital's hub and spoke model emergency management, which primarily aims to provide timely treatment for heart attack and stroke patients.
CMCH Dean B. Asokan said that the official was impressed with the emergency management system wherein CMCH acted as the hub hospital for STEMI (ST elevation in myocardial infarction) cluster in the region with secondary level Government hospitals as spoke hospitals.
Dr. Roy visited CMCH to have a first-hand experience of the system after it won appreciation in a recent meeting of health secretaries from all States held in New Delhi. The hub and spoke model is meant to reduce mortality caused by STEMI, a serious type of heart attack, through quick transfer of patients from the spoke hospitals to CMCH through the 108 ambulance network.
“Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD) like heart attack and stroke top the list of diseases that cause sudden death. Dr. Roy, who works in the NCD section of DGHS, explored possibilities of replicating the model in other parts of the country as a means to combat the NCD burden,” said Dr. Asokan.
Dr. Roy visited the Department of Cardiology and interacted with the doctors and technicians.
He also visited the catheterisation laboratory with which the hub hospital could give effective treatment to heart attack and stroke cases on arrival from spoke hospitals.
