e-governance at CMCH
District Collector Neeraj Mittal shows the bar-coded outpatient registration slip while launching e-governance at the Coimbatore Medical College Hospital on Tuesday. Dean of the hospital Hemalatha Ganapathy (right) is in the picture.It took just 10 minutes for R. Shanmughavel, suffering from coughing fits, to register his name at the outpatient counter on Tuesday, get a bar-coded slip, undergo an examination by a doctor and get a diagnosis before obtaining medicines from the pharmacy. Private multi-speciality hospitals here did not offer a similar system
This happened at the Coimbatore Medical College Hospital, and not at a corporate multi-speciality clinic. E-governance in the outpatient department was launched by Collector Neeraj Mittal and demonstrated with Mr. Shanmughavel’s case.“I have come here earlier, and it used to take more than an hour for the whole process,” Mr. Shanmughavel told the Collector after getting the medicines and a computer-printed copy of the prescription.While the Collector said this was the first such initiative in the State, hospital officials told him that even private multi-speciality hospitals here did not offer a similar system.
Soon after Mr. Shanmughavel got the outpatient slip with a bar-coded sticker containing his name, age and registration number, he went to the doctor for diagnosis. When the doctor scanned the slip, the patient details appeared on the screen of one of the 20 laptop computers provided for this project. The doctor checked the patient and made out a prescription on the computer itself.One of the factors that helped save time was the elimination of a handwritten prescription.
“There is no need now to write the names of the medicines and dosage,” the Collector said. The patient gave only the outpatient slip to the staff at the pharmacy. When the bar code was scanned, the prescription appeared on the computer. Along with the drugs, a copy of the prescription was given to the patient.
“What makes this system patient-friendly is that the medicines in stock are displayed on the doctors’ computers. They can look for alternatives if the ones they want to prescribe are out of stock,” the Collector said. Previously, only at the pharmacy would patients come to know that the medicines prescribed were out of stock, and they would have to go back to the doctor to get an alternative prescribed.
After inquiring with the pharmacy staff, the Collector said: “The manual stock-taking takes three hours after the pharmacy closes every day. Now the stock position is available, in real time, on the integrated system.”The Collector said the postgraduate doctors wanted even the diagnosis to be made an e-record.M. Selvaganesh, who demonstrated the system, said that until now four postgraduate doctors in each wing could handle 250-300 outpatients from 8 a.m. to noon. The new system would help increase the number to 450.
“Apart from saving time, the new system will help ensure that the details in the records are accurate,” Professor of Medicine P. Jambulingam said.Mr. Mittal said only the paediatric, medicine and surgery wings were brought under the system; the other wings would be covered gradually.The computers and other equipment had been provided at a cost of Rs.10 lakh. Of this, close to Rs.6 lakh had come from contributions made by philanthropists to the hospital maintenance fund. The rest came from other donors.
