PremiumAfter hospitals beds, oxygen, medicines and medical devices have fallen short due to exponential rise in covid-19 patients, the availability of home healthcare facilities providing hospital like ICU systems too has become difficult.
The average daily covid-19 case count has increased to over 4 lakhs this week overwhelming hospital infrastructure in the country. Several private sector hospital chains that started home healthcare facilities especially for covid-19 patients last year have now withdrawn the services as there is a staff shortage at hospitals with large number of patients. Home healthcare services too are strained.
"Home healthcare gradually started picking up pace in India in last few years. And covid-19 exponentially increased the demands of home healthcare services as hospitals are chocked with patients. After more demand than supplies, we are trying very hard to provide healthcare facilities at home for covid patients," said Dr Gaurav Thukral, EVP and COO of HealthCare at HOME (HCAH).
Further, the private companies providing attendants and nurses for covid-19 patients are charging as high as ₹5000 per day for an attendant and ₹7000 for a nurse. “There is a shortage of nurses for home healthcare services. Before covid-19 we were looking for clients to take our services but now we have so many requests for home healthcare that we don’t have nurses to be deployed at home for care. I am trying to bring nurses from Chandigarh, Rajasthan, Allahabad, Sultanpur and Himachal Pradesh to cater to the demands of patients and people continue to wait for home healthcare. I get thousands of calls a day but I also have limited resources," said Saswat Mohanty, founder Curae healthcare services.
Home healthcare services experts said that these services have always acted as a reticent ecosystem partner, supporting the formal healthcare infrastructure and network of hospitals. In the pre-Covid era, home health care services took over the baton of providing post-hospitalization care for patients who preferred after-care within the comfort of their home.
“In the post-covid era, when hospitals suddenly became inaccessible, the focus (and very rightly so), shifted to accessing healthcare at home. This has naturally put a strain on all resources and home healthcare services are no exception. More than equipment, which can still be bought off the shelf, the real challenge has been to augment qualified human resources. i.e. doctors, nurses and other paramedics," said Amol Deshmukh, Founder, MedRabbits, a Pune based home healthcare service provider.
At a time when patients are struggling to find hospital beds, the companies that provide home healthcare services too are tying with hotels to cater to more covid-19 positive clients. “There has been a rapid increase in the demand for at-home services in recent times as a lot of elderly live alone in the country and they need immediate support during these trying times," said Saumyajit Roy, Co-Founder & CEO at Emoha Elder Care. Emoha Elder Care that also provides has set up a 60 bed Covid Care Centre in Gurugram which is also seeing high demands with several other similar facilities running short of beds.
“Various healthcare infrastructure services, medicines, devices, and equipment – are all falling short due to an exponential increase in demands from covid-19 patients ranging from hospital beds to oxygen cylinders," he said. The burden of covid-19 cases in increasing continuously. At least 3,66,161 new covid-19 cases were registered in the last 24 hours.
“We are building capacity and skilling our manpower to meet the high demand of homecare healthcare services. However, the second wave of covid- 19 is asking much more than our resources can deliver. Healthcare resources in the country, be it infrastructure, oxygen cylinders, medical equipment or even healthcare providers are limited," said Nanki Lakhwinder Singh, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Genesis Rehabilitation Services India (GRSI).
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