BENGALURU: The State health department is switching to an online referral module, under the Ayushman Bharath-Arogya Karnataka scheme requiring complex secondary or tertiary treatment at health care facilities, empanelled private hospitals and public health institutes, or centre of excellence in the absence of medical capability and capacity in any public health institution. The new system will be in place from 1 June.
To make the system familiar, a month of bi-modal (both online and offline) referral will be allowed for May 2022 which began from Sunday, said State Commissioner for health and family welfare services, D Randeep. NIC Bengaluru has developed this online referral module which has been successfully field tested and is now ready for rollout, he said.
Till now, the manual referrals were issued in a prescribed pre-printed format that ate into the time of the doctors and Suvarna Arogya Medical Coordinators (SAMCO), besides inconveniencing patients. Hence, the government order on 15 November 2018 envisaged the development of a seamless, online referral system.
The referral from a single online source is intended to prevent fraud, Randeep added. From 1 June, the doctors/specialists and nodal officers have to mandatorily access the website using their user credentials and start referring the patients to other facilities. But in May 2022, preferably PHIs should start using the online referral module, but to ensure there is no inconvenience to patients, the manual referral will also be permitted, he said.
The nodal officers of the PHIs have already received training from SAST (Suvarna Arogya Suraksha Trust). However, if more training is required, PHIs can approach the project manager, IT in SAST or the respective district coordinators in SAST to organize training and get finish it before May 15.