Gaps in coordination between city hosps, control room; patients wary

Noida: When Aniruddh Tripathi, a Noida resident, found that his friend Arpit had tested positive for Covid-19, he called the integrated control room to arrange for a hospital bed. A bed was then allocated at NIIMS.
“However, when I took Arpit to the hospital, we could not get him admitted,” said Tripathi. Like Tripathi, a number of residents in Noida and Greater Noida have been complaining of the inconvenience they had to face due to the lack of coordination between the Covid control room and the designated medical facilities.
While Tripathi finally managed to arrange a bed for this friend at a hospital in Ghaziabad, many are struggling to get their close ones admitted to medical facilities. In some cases, critical patients have died waiting outside hospitals despite getting confirmation from the control room.
To take admission to a Covid facility, people have to generate a code or confirm a bed after a telephonic registration at the integrated control room (1800 419 2211). Following this, the name of the hospital is provided for admission and the control room staff tells the hospital to expect the patient. However, nearly every day, numerous patients are being denied the admission after they reach the Covid care facilities having booked a slot over the control room in advance.
On Thursday evening, the grandfather of Delhi Commission for Women chairperson Swati Maliwal died outside Sharda hospital after the family waited for more than 45 minutes to get him admitted. The hospital administration said that they did not have a vacant ICU bed, but the patient was still referred to the facility.
While nobody answered the calls made over the two numbers provided on the NIIMS’ website, senior doctors and officials from other private hospitals maintained that they are being forced to deny admission due to the unavailability of oxygen.
“We had provided the bed availability list to the chief medical officer’s office last week. But due to the growing demand for oxygen, it is getting difficult to manage the in-house patients and new admissions are being denied. The control room is not coordinating with hospitals on a real-time basis to find out if they are willing to take more patients,” said an officer from a private hospital at Sector 33 in Noida.