Kolkata: Three emergency patients, who were rushed to state-run IPGMER-SSKM Hospital were admitted to KPC Medical College on Monday. These three cases are the first lot of patients who are getting medical care at private hospitals free of cost under the state govt’s initiative of making private hospitals provide free treatment on 10% beds for patients referred from govt hospitals.State health minister Sharadwat Mukherjee said the govt has already secured 2,426 beds across various private hospitals that would be used for critical patients who need immediate medical attention but are unable to get a bed in private hospitals.“We started the exercise of referring emergency govt hospital patients from IPGMER-SSKM Hospital as this hospital is one of the busiest in terms of patient load. We have gathered 2,426 for this initiative and we will expand the service from other government hospitals to other private hospitals,” said Mukherjee while listing the achievement of the state health dept on the first 100 days of governance.A few weeks after assuming office, CM Suvendu Adhikari had earlier announced the govt’s plan of garnering 10% free beds for govt hospital patients in private hospitals that had acquired govt land for free or at a nominal rate for setting up the hospitals. Sources in the health dept said that even while there were always conditions like reservation of bed for poor patients in lieu of the land, previous govts did not ensure the implementation of such clauses.Such reference needs the coordination between govt hospital, private hospital and the 24×7 control room at Swasthya Bhawan which connects the two hospitals. Accordingly, a drill to check the coordination between the three agencies was conducted between officials at SSKM, KPC Medical College and the control room on Monday before the actual reference.According to sources all three patients had come to the emergency unit at SSKM on Monday at different times and they needed hospital admission. But barring a couple of the 40 beds in the emergency unit, all were occupied by patients waiting admission. While the patients were being tended and being stabilised, the SSKM team got in touch with the Swasthya Bhawan control room. Within a few minutes, the control room directed the SSKM team to send the patients to KPC after assuring the bed availability at the latter.“We get around 900 emergency patients daily. This system of reference will help hospitals with huge patient load,” said an administrator at IPGMER-SSKM Hospital, that get an additional footfall of around 12,000 patients daily in its OPDs.The health minister said that this initiative is taking off from Kolkata and the service will gradually extend to other medical college and hospitals like the NRS, CMC, RG Kar, CNMC and Sagore Dutta.“This is a new initiative and there could be hiccups in the initial phase. But we are confident of ironing out the challenges in the days to come,” said Mukherjee.
