Bhubaneswar: The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Bhubaneswar, has now planned to do away with the half-baked Online Registration System (ORS) for patient registrations and will have its own dedicated online system soon.
This comes after this newspaper reported about the partial relief the ORS system used to give to the patients who visit the premier medical college for treatment. With the ORS system, the patients— who sought online appointments of the doctors from the hospital — had to stand in queues for hours to pay Rs 10 as fees to get their final registration done despite having confirmed appointments.
The hospital authorities, while talking exclusively with Orissa POST, informed that the officials have planned to do away with the lacuna posed by the centralised ORS system. The administrative officials from the hospital said that it is very likely that within the next two months the new system will be rolled out.
“We are holding talks with the Centre to have our own advanced dedicated portal which can overcome some of the issues that plague the older online patient registration system and improve the efficiency of online bookings,” Sachidananda Mohanty, Medical Superintendent, AIIMS-Bhubaneswar told Orissa POST.
He also added that the new system is most likely to be ready within the next two months. It is anticipated that the new system will have better options and will be more efficient compared to the ORS. Many patients had earlier complained that with the ORS system, the severely sick patients and their attendants were forced to stand in registration counters for hours to just pay Rs 10 as consultation fees despite having online bookings. The ORS system was maintained by the National Informatics Centre (NIC). Coordinating with NIC for all online operations was cumbersome. NIC handles several premier hospitals for online booking through the ORS including all the AIIMS and other important government hospitals from across the country.
It is anticipated that with the new system the patients can book their appointments online with the respective department sitting at home and also pay the prescribed fees to avoid standing for hours at the hospital. The new system is likely to increase the access to information for the patients as this will not only help in booking appointments but provide information on availability of seats in different departments on particular days for patients to make the best choices according to their needs. The new system is also expected to feature added benefits like access to blood reports and other details relating to the hospital. An online profile of the patients visiting the hospital is also expected to help in better maintenance of medical records for the hospital.
According to the AIIMS administration, the Bhubaneswar outlet records a total of around 4,000 OPD patient visits per day which they claim is likely to reach 5,000 patients per day by the end of the current year. The administration, on the other side, is also trying to work on other facets to bring better quality services and amenities for the patients to make the hospital one of the best hospitals from the state.