CMCH shuts the door on touts, number of surgeries goes up

By imposing tight security measures and providing prompt and efficient healthcare, the Coimbatore Medical College Hospital has managed to drive touts away from its premises.
As a result, the government hospital has seen a sharp spike in the number of surgeries performed in 2018 compared to 2017.

The touts were engaged by private hospitals to lure patients with insurance coverage to their hospitals by promising better care and speedy recovery.

For the past one year, the government hospital has tightened security at the entrance of all the wards, especially trauma and emergency wards. Only attenders with passes were allowed inside the wards to visit patients during specific visiting hours.

“One of main reasons for heightened security is to stop touts from entering and interacting with patients. Besides preventing infections, disturbance to patients and staff is also a reason for restricted entry,” dean of the Coimbatore Medical College Hospital Dr B Ashokan said.

The touts often walk into the trauma and emergency wards casually, pretend like they have relatives or even admitted into next bed and strike up conversations with patients and their attenders. “Their modus operandi is to find out if the vehicle involved in the accident is insured and if the patients have some form of insurance. If they say yes, they lure them to private hospitals promising them faster care. They claim that surgery and treatment in GH will be delayed,” Dr Ashokan said. “Unwary patients and relatives fall for it and vacate,” he added.

“However, now with not allowing attenders without passes and installing CCTV cameras, we have been able to eliminate their presence inside the wards,” he said.

This has contributed largely to the number of surgeries in the hospital increasing last year. The hospital performed 16,070 major surgeries in 2018, which is 26% higher than 12,708 major surgeries performed in 2017. They also performed 74,597 minor surgeries, which is almost 40% higher than 53,049 surgeries performed in 2017.

“One of the main contributions to the increase were surgeries done to trauma patients and victims, who we ensured do not leave our campus. Under the Tamil Nadu Accident and Emergency Care Initiative, we ensure that a patient is given first aid and investigated within two hours. If stable, the patient undergoes surgery within six hours. Patients feel secure and don’t find reasons to look for other options,” the dean said.

“With many trauma patients requiring three to four surgeries, our numbers automatically go up,” he added.

For example, in March 2017, the hospital performed only 2,700 trauma care surgeries.

In the same period in 2018, the hospital performed 4,225 surgeries.