Audit plugs gap in O2 use in Jalandhar

JALANDHAR: Oxygen audit at Jalandhar civil hospital, which is one of the biggest Covid care centres in Doaba region and also takes level-3 patients, has helped cut down requirement of oxygen cylinders by 47.8% in three days. The audit also revealed that captive oxygen plant was under-utilized after which 100% utilization has been ensured leading to significant drop in dependence on cylinders from outside.
Meanwhile, the district administration is also forming two teams for similar audit at private hospitals. The audit at the civil hospital was ordered by Jalandhar deputy commissioner Ghanshyam Thori, who had entrusted the task to a team led by ADC Vishesh Sarangal.
Sarangal said all the supply lines were physically checked and at one spot, gas was leaking in trauma ward which was plugged. “We have also got CCTV cameras installed at different places for monitoring of oxygen cylinders apart from log books to take record of every single cylinder being utilized at the hospital,” he added.
“We also found that level-2 patients were being put on oxygen support whose source was the oxygen plant within the hospital. As the patients had less consumption, the plant was running much lower than its capacity. We got shifted level-3 patients on this source of oxygen and now this is working at full capacity while level-2 patients have been shifted on cylinders,” he said. “We also found that some ventilators were not extracting entire oxygen from the cylinders and some of it would remain unutilized and we have asked these cylinders to use for other patients. Idea is to extract the cylinders completely while the filled cylinders would also be checked randomly to ensure that they were filled to the capacity,” Sarangal told.
He said on the day of auditing Civil Hospital was getting 410 cylinders per day from outside and on Monday requirement was of 214 cylinders even as number of patients increased. “We are forming two more teams for private hospitals who would carry out auditing there and we expect that there also we would be able to save oxygen,” he said.