AIIMS Delhi to soon join hands with other city govt hospitals for cross referral of patients

The AIIMS in Delhi will soon pair up with other city government hospitals to ensure cross referral of patients, a move aimed at managing the burgeoning patient load at Centre-run premier health facility, officials said on Friday.

As a pilot, the Indira Gandhi Hospital in Dwarka and NDMC's Charak Palika Hospital will be taken on-board and paired with AIIMS starting next month, they added.

Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena on Friday chaired a meeting to evolve a formal system for referral of patients between the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and other government hospitals in Delhi.

"The objective behind the move is to optimally utilize the vacant beds in other government hospitals where critical but stable patients from AIIMS, which is reeling under acute shortage of beds, could be referred for treatment.

"The initiative would go a long way in managing the burgeoning patient load at the AIIMS, while also significantly enhancing the healthcare system and medical expertise at other government hospitals," said a Raj Niwas official.

The new system will also ensure that patients who require primary and secondary healthcare services go to other hospitals, leaving ample room for the chronic and critically-ill patients to get specialized treatment at the AIIMS, he explained.

The other positive thing is that it will prevent inconvenience to the patients who have to shuttle between different hospitals looking for beds that often result in fatalities during transit, he said.

AIIMS would help these hospitals in terms of expertise and critical infrastructure and patients from AIIMS could be referred to these hospitals in case of unavailability of beds or after triaging has been completed as per needs of the patient, he added.

After the pilot project is started next month at two hospitals, other government hospitals and healthcare centres will be roped in and developed as "partner institutions" of AIIMS, to cater to the local population in different localities of Delhi.

"The aim is to develop super-specialty hospitals in different localities of the capital so that the burden on AIIMS could reduce and simultaneously people across the city could access healthcare near their homes at par with what they would have got at AIIMS," the official said.

During the meeting, the LG was informed that the emergency department of AIIMS receives an average of 866 patients daily apart from the unmanageable critical patients coming from other government hospitals due to the lack of super-specialty facilities there.

"But out of the 866 emergency patients, only 50 (5.7 per cent) are admitted to AIIMS per day. However, it was observed that several beds in other government hospitals remain vacant and hence, many such patients from AIIMS can be admitted to these hospitals," the official said.

Saxena has directed the Health department to carry out a gap analysis of available beds in all its major hospitals within a week. At the same time, the Health department will develop a centralized dashboard where the availability of beds in all government hospitals in Delhi is available on a real time basis, the official said.

"It is because of the absence of a formal referral system that the stable patients referred out of the AIIMS face inconvenience, as often they are unable to find vacant beds and are forced to move from one hospital to another," he said.

The meeting was attended by AIIMS Director Dr. M Srinivas, Chief Secretary of Delhi, NDMC Chairman, Principal Secretary (Health), Delhi, Director (DGHS) and Medical Directors of major Delhi Government Hospitals.