Few days back, the Jammu and Kashmir National Health Mission released the ranking of government health facilities. According to officials, the ranking was done on the basis of registration, conversion of EMR (Electronic Medical Record) and patient feedback uploaded on the portal of JK e Sahaj for the month of November.
The ranking surely must have been done with an objective to further strengthen the healthcare in government health facilities of Jammu and Kashmir. But more solid steps are needed for strengthening the healthcare. Reports say that there is shortage of doctors in hospitals.
The doctors working in a number of hospitals are over-burdened due to heavy rush of patients. In such a scenario the patients too do not get the care, which they need. There is a requirement to appoint more doctors in under staffed government hospitals.
A number of doctors’ posts are lying vacant in hospitals. These posts have to be filled up. More posts have to be created, wherever needed. Shortage of para- medical staff in several hospitals is also affecting the work. This problem also should be solved.
Reports indicate that sometimes there is unnecessary referring of patients to tertiary care hospitals and district hospitals from lower health facilities. These patients can be treated in lower health facilities but they are being unnecessarily referred to tertiary care and district hospitals.
Because of the over-load of patients the tertiary care hospitals are not able to effectively do the real job for which they have been set up. Tertiary hospitals are set up to provide treatment to patients, who cannot be managed at lower health facilities.
There is also need to speedily repair the non-functional equipments installed in hospitals. Sometimes, these equipments meant for doing various kind of tests go out of order and take long time for repairs. Because of this, the patients suffer and they have to get these tests done outside government health facilities.
Ranking of health facilities is expected to further improve the patient care in hospitals. In the first phase, 578 facilities were covered under this initiative and other facilities will be covered in a phased manner, officials said.
According to them, the hospital ranking was assigned for different categories of facilities like Associated Hospitals of Government Medical Colleges, District Hospitals, Community Health Centres (CHCs) and Primary Health Centre (PHCs).