Savyasaachi

CHF - Congested Hospitals, a Failure?

A fresh morning … dressed up in formals and white aprons … you enter your hospital … with a fresh zeal... A renewed hope of learning something new… and soon you realize- it is a tiring routine all over again!

This is how most of us feel once we enter our clinics. Not just us, perhaps any person who enters a Government hospital invariably ends up feeling the same!

We often see people commenting about the standards of government medical care centers, hesitating to consult them for any necessary medical help. When asked, the most common answer which we can expect is, “Crowd!”

We often see government hospitals as overcrowded dwellings, as places which are perhaps best suited for public announcements. Though it sounds hilarious, it is a really serious issue. Why do you think these hospitals are crowded? Is it the high patient input which is totally responsible for it? Or is there something else which is equally responsible?

One of the best methods medical science has taught us in assessing things that are in excess of their capacity is, “a high input or a decreased ability to clear the volume”. When applied to this scenario, it becomes very clear that it is not just the patient input but an inefficient way of handling them which is responsible for this!

To quote, here are a few examples substantiating the above mentioned inefficiency of management:

• An OP slip costing around 10 rupees costs a patient around half an hour of his valuable time.
• A consultation of not more than 5 minutes needs at least 2 hours.
• An imaging department with 3 or more X-ray machines, where at least 2 seldom work and all hundreds of patients are funneled towards a single machine, (which too can stop working anytime) and with a single technician.

There are many similar examples to point out the inefficiency in the system. Most often we see patients running around from department to department before they reach the appropriate place and sometimes they would succumb to their illnesses before they land. Every day, we see doctors waiting in the wards for reports, and attenders roaming around to find out what exactly they are supposed to do.

Isn’t this a very big failure of our health system? They tag our resources primitive and plan huge missions in upgrading them, building up super-speciality clinics, introducing newer modalities! Is that what we actually need? What is the point of upgrading a system which is already inefficient? What is the use of bringing new modalities when we do not manage these ‘primitive’ ones? Don’t you think what we need is good management of existing resources rather than more resources?

Here I have made an attempt to convey what I feel is important in a government institution like ours. Hope it does not remain a debatable topic, but becomes a notifiable one!

“What is good now becomes evil in the future. It is the time when good becomes evil that is important”. One of the most fabulous words I have read. The attitude what we see in our system perhaps was good only in the yesteryears. But now, the time has come. It needs amendments and guidance. Hope we see a better medical institution if not in facilities, at least in organization!