Soon, book appointments on AIIMS App

NAGPUR: Dr MH Rao, executive director of AIIMS Madurai, was recently handed over additional charge of AIIMS Nagpur. On Monday, he held separate review meetings with faculty and students to know their grievances and ideas for improving patient experience.
“We want to make patients happy,” said Rao. His immediate plans include launching an AIIMS App for patients to book appointments on the lines of a similar initiate he took at a government medical college in Tirupathi.
He said AIIMS Nagpur would now publish vacancy advertisements to ensure all vacant posts are filled while also urging the government to increase senior resident posts from 70 to 200.
“I am continuously holding review meetings with faculty and students. There are small issues, I will try to resolve them. With regard to patient experience, we will try to reduce waiting time. My aim is to make the patient happy, as comfortable as possible, try to reduce time for registration as well as waiting for consultation at cubicles,” he said.
Dr Rao added, “We are planning to launch AIIMS Nagpur app. People having smartphones would be able to fix an appointment with a consultant online. We will give them a time slot and they will not need to come in the morning and wait for their turn. It will be launched as early as possible.
The previous college where I worked as dean had introduced a similar app for patient appointments. The IT department of that college at Tirupathi can help AIIMS Nagpur.”
Once functional, patients would need a maximum of one hour to wait for consultation. “We have already started providing investigation reports on phone. We will also try to send them as soon as possible,” he said.
Dr Rao said shortage of faculty is another important issue. “Within a month or two, new faculty would be recruited. Problem with wait list in investigations or admission is because we don’t have adequate faculty. We also don’t have enough senior resident posts. We need at least 200. Right now, only 50 or so are working. Recruitment of both faculty and SRs would be among my first priorities here,” he said.
When told that previous recruitment drives didn’t attract doctors, he said, “We shall keep on giving rolling advertisements. The ministry of health has approved our posts. But it is now stuck at the department of expenditure. I will do the follow up on my next visit to Delhi,” he said.