Patient Registration Center meant that the waiting time in the Hospital had come down by nearly 6 hours per patient. The 3 am serpentine lines were no longer there. They were replaced by a more orderly queue system that commenced at 8 am and reached the OPD consultation rooms by 9 am.
The most innovative feature of the new model was the introduction n of EXIT OPD Counters. Patients who were recommended for advanced Laboratory Tests, Radio-Diagnosis, Virology and Pathology Tests as follow-up appointments, all of which could be scheduled from the EXIT OPD Counters. The Patient thus
had a very orderly journey from the point of entry to the Hospital to the point of exit. Even the VIP Patients including the officials at senior position in government willingly went through the entire OPD Transformation Process and found the entire experience quite expeditious and satisfying.
Specialised Cadres
AIIMS transformed itself into a patient friendly hospital by its willingness to adopt the modern day digital practices and create specialized cadres who enabled rapid scaling up of the new technology. The Nursing Informatics Specialists provided the linkage between the Clinical Departments and the OPD appointments.
AIIMS – India’ s First Fully Digital Public Hospital
Hitherto, the implementation of the e-Hospital project had not been orderly. For AIIMS to be a fully Digital Hospital, each of the e-Hospital modules needed to implement in an orderly manner to create a comprehensively digital hospital. By June 2016, the e-Hospital module implementation in AIIMS was completed. The NIC took a big step forward in completing the AIIMS e-Hospital Project. NIC Teams from Tripura worked with each of the Departments in AIIMS in
The most innovative feature of the new model was the introduction of EXIT OPD Counters
a prescribed time frame to transform AIIMS as India’ s first fully digital public hospital.
The modules comprised of Blood Bank module, Billing Module, In-Patient Department comprising admission and bed to bed management, Laboratory
Module integrating 55 laboratories, establishment of nearly 200 Kiosks with Net Banking Facilities for ease of payments, Laundry Module for monitoring the central laundry operations, Store management for inventory purposes, Dietary Module for preparation of electronic diet charts for in-patients, and RIS-PACS( Radiology Imaging System – Picture Archiving Communications System) for exchange of radiology data.
The Titanic is Saved
The transformation of AIIMS to a patient friendly hospital under the Digital India Initiative can be compared to“ Saving the Titanic”. Under the Digital India Initiative, a core team of officials collaborated cordially and constructively over a long period of time to make the First Digital Revolution in Health Care possible. There was considerable resistance from every possible quarters – patients, support and administrative staff, security apparatus and even some medicos had their share of doubt during the course of the implementation of the Project. Needless to say, now everyone is satisfied and happy. As the success story unfolds benefitting 35 lakh patients, in 12 months’ time, the hours and hours of effort put in by those involved in the project, are adequately rewarded. The Prime Minister launched the Online Registration System as part of the Digital India Initiatives in July 2015. Following a year of successful implementation wherein the project benefitted 35 lac patients, the Prime Minister mentioned the successful implementation of the AIIMS e-Hospital Project from the ramparts of Red Fort in his Independence Day Address this year. The AIIMS OPD Transformation Project has enthused several State Governments. AIIMS has been mandated to conduct on-boarding workshops for replication across all 12 Central Government Hospitals. �
November 2016 13 www. smartgovernance. in