Rumours keep most away from govt hospitals in Patiala

PATIALA: The government hospitals of Patiala, including Rajindra Hospital (RH), are of late getting fewer Covid-19 patients, and the reason being attributed to this trend is rumours doing the rounds against these government health facilities.
Over 50% beds and around 90% ventilators in the government-run RH are lying unused. Patients are apparently giving preference to private hospitals, which are allegedly charging hefty amounts.
A doctor confided, “In the last few days, the daily Covid case count at RH has come down to 16 to 19 patients, whereas it was 25 to 30 earlier. People are opting for private hospitals, which are charging around Rs 2 lakh per patient. Over 400 deaths are also keeping the patients away. Besides, the overall daily admissions in OPD and IPD, delivery and dog bite cases have also come down following rumours against the Rajindra Hospital.”
Patiala civil surgeon Dr Harish Malhotra said, “People are now also going to private hospitals. Earlier, even patients from Ludhiana used to seek admission here, but now private health facilities are offering the Covid services. Rumour mongering doesn’t have much to do with it.”
On the complaint of technical glitches by a patient, he said the patients sometimes get negative in rapid tests but are tested positive in RT-PCR test, which is a confirmatory test, but they do not understand it.
In RH, there are around 123 ventilators, including 10 portable and 12 non-Covid ventilators. But, only around 10-14 are being used. There are six government hospitals in the district designated for Covid treatment and the total bed capacity is over 830, including around 600 beds in RH. Similarly, around 11 private designated hospitals have around 180 beds.
The occupancy in government hospitals is around 23% for Level-2 (L2) beds and 77% for Level-3 beds, whereas in private hospitals, 72% of L2 beds and 43% of L3 beds are occupied, according to the data available on the government’s Patiala.nic.in website.
Among the government hospitals in the district, only RH has the facility of L3 beds to treat serious Covid patients, whereas there is zero occupancy in Sub-Divisional Hospital (SDH), Samana with 50 beds under L2 category. Similarly, SDH, Nabha having 50 beds, SDH Rajpura with 50 beds, Mata Kaushalya Government Hospital with 30 beds and Military Hospital, Patiala with 50 L2 beds have 4%, 6%, 10% and 28% occupancy, respectively.
“The hospital has a capacity of around 600 beds, but the maximum occupancy has reached up to 325 so far, while on Monday, there were around 215 patients in RH. We are trying to put in our best efforts to serve the patients with best treatment,” said Paras Pandov, the RH medical superintendent.
Dr Surabhi Malik, the in-charge for L3 beds, said 77 patients out of total 88 L3 beds are occupied, while private hospitals have only 16 of the total 37 L3 beds occupied. She said even in terms of L2 beds, RH has 151 beds occupied out of total 512, while private hospitals have got only 101 patients in 140 beds.