BHUBANESWAR: The state government has decided to focus on transformation of 147 hospitals and completion of 22 big healthcare projects, including teaching hospitals of 10 medical colleges in the next fiscal apart from scaling up of flagship Biju Swasthya Kalyan Yojana (BSKY).
At the two-day senior officers’ conference here on Tuesday, health secretary Shalini Pandit said selected districts headquarters hospitals, sub-divisional hospitals and CHCs with focus on first referral units will be taken up for upgradation at a cost of Rs 750 crore under the transformation initiative - Ama Hospital.
“Several health infrastructure projects of around Rs 4,466 crore are underway in different parts of the state. The target has been set to complete those projects in next 14 months. The Kalahandi medical college is also expected to enrol students from 2024 and three more are in the pipeline,” she told mediapersons.
The projects to be completed include 650-bed teaching hospitals at Puri and Koraput, 100-bed teaching hospitals at Balasore, Baripada, Balangir, Keonjhar, Bhawanipatna, Phulbani and Jajpur and trauma care with surgery complex at PGI-Bhubaneswar.
Discussing the best practices adopted by some hospitals, the health secretary advised districts to adopt the online OPD appointment, which significantly reduces queues and OPD waiting time and digitisation of laboratory tests, which enables patients to get an SMS link to the laboratory report that can be downloaded anywhere.
Collectors were also asked to adopt automated queue management, a best practice of Mayurbhanj district and set up digital information system and touch kiosk, a best practice of Koraput district which helps patients and attendants to get information on services available, doctors and nurses’ duty schedules besides stock position of drugs stock and blood.
Meanwhile, principal secretary of Industries department Hemant Sharma has asked all district collectors to prepare a 12-month action plan in consultation with the government departments concerned for strategic industrial development and investment facilitation at the district-level.