KOLKATA: With the second wave underway and the number of fresh cases spiking rapidly, health officials are putting in a number of plans to counter the recent surge. To begin with, the
state health department has reissued the Covid Patient Management System (CPMS) that it had released to hospitals and nursing homes last July during the first wave to dispel complaints of confusion and poor patient care.
Currently, the virus is spreading at a tremendous pace — almost twice the rate during the first wave. Healthcare experts have warned of a massive multiplication in the number of infected in the next four to five weeks. The health department has now asked hospitals to ensure 100% data related to various aspects of Covid patients.
“Due to the recent upsurge and the rapidly rising number of positive patients needing hospital care, we have to resort to diligent use of this online CPMS so that patient management is better and each patient can be monitored by health administrators at all levels. The directive is for all health units cutting across private and public facilities,” said a source at Swasthya Bhawan.
The health department has directed hospitals to ensure that details of each admission of a Covid patient in real time on CPMS and patient monitoring score (PMS) of each patient — whether admitted in the general ward, critical care unit or in a high dependency unit — are duly entered in the system. The vital parameters of all patients and their investigative reports have to be uploaded in the system everyday. Hospitals have also been told to indicate discharges promptly and enter details of each death into the system within four hours.
Making it easy for the families to know the status of the patients, an OTP-based interface has also been made part of the CPMS. All that one needs is to enter the mobile number of the family member provided during admission. “This is in order to enable anxious family members get access to a patient’s status online at any time,” said an official.
Hospitals said they are familiar with the CPMS and there are only minor changes this time, like the number of times data has to be uploaded in a day. They said they would have no problem getting back to using this system.
The health department has also asked hospitals to stay prepared in terms of number of beds and manpower. In many hospitals that have Covid facilities, services of doms, scavengers and security personnel have also been extended.