Up to five lakh patients have benefitted since October last year due to QR code-enabled registration at hospital counters, which has helped reduce long queues, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) said on Thursday.
MoHFW’s National Health Authority (NHA) under Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) introduced the ‘Scan and Share’ service for faster outpatient department (OPD) registrations in October 2022.
Since then, the service has been adopted in 365 government and private hospitals, Basant Garg, additional CEO, NHA explained.
The participating hospitals, both government and private, display their unique QR codes in patient-registration areas. “The patients can scan the QR code using any health application such as ABHA app, Aarogya Setu app, EkaCare, DRiefcase, Bajaj Health or PayTM and share information like name, age, gender, and unique health ID [ABHA number] to the Health Management Information system [HMIS] of the hospital,” Dr. Garg said.
“This enables paperless registration and thereby instant token generation. The patient saves time and the health facility is able to optimise the need of resources deployed for registration. This process also leads to the patient’s health records getting digitally linked to their Ayushman Bharat Health Account. Patients can manage and access this from their phone anytime anywhere,” Dr. Garg added.
The service is currently provided in 125 districts across 25 States and UTs. Leading user States include Karnataka where 2.5 lakh tokens have been generated, Uttar Pradesh which has registered 1.1 lakh users and Delhi which has recorded 72,000 users.
“The ‘Scan and Share’ service is a typical example of how technology can be leveraged to provide better services to patients and to improve the system efficiency,” Dr. Garg said.
He added, “With increased adoption, patient registrations can be made effortless, seamless and accurate. Our focus is to work closely with the stakeholders to maximise the impact of ABDM-enabled digital health services.”
NHA has additionally registered two lakh health facilities like hospitals, clinics, diagnostic laboratories and imaging centres, pharmacies etc., in the Health Facility Registry (HFR). The HFR is the core building block of ABDM that aims to serve as a single source for verified information on health facilities across the country. Among the verified facilities, around 75% belongs to the government sector. Karnataka (46,179), Uttar Pradesh (31,417), Maharashtra (13,789) and Andhra Pradesh (13,345) top the list of health facilities on HFR.
