BENGALURU: With confusion over bed blocking and ‘bed-for-cash’ allegations, physical triaging is being adopted as a prerequisite to allot beds in hospitals or Covid Care Centres. Physical triaging is being made the primary source of patient evaluation instead of tele-triaging, to allocate beds, Forest Minister and minister in-charge of war rooms Aravind Limbavalli said on Thursday.
Speaking to the media on the sidelines of the launch of software to block beds through triaging centres, Limbavalli said the Covid Hospital Bed Management System has been upgraded. A detailed physical triage module has been developed and integrated. The module can be used at 16 Physical Triage Centres (PTC) across the eight zones of Bengaluru.
Citizens can walk into centres for physical triaging and each centre is equipped with ambulances to shift patients to hospitals. “The ambulances will also double as Mobile Triage Units for doorstep triage of patients who cannot visit PTCs due to their medical condition.”
Even as BBMP has decided to wind up most of the triage centres, 16 will be operational to ensure patients are not inconvenienced. Each PTC is attached to one Covid Care Centre with oxygen beds. Also, 26 hospitals have been identified across the zones to be blocked exclusively from PTCs.
Limbavalli added that a trial was done over the last three days where 936 patients were physically triaged. Of these patients, 678 were referred for home isolation, 186 were sent to CCC and 72 were allocated HDU/ICU beds.Officials in the state war room said the queue system for bed blocking will start in another 2-3 days.