Srinagar: Patients seeking medical care at SMHS Hospital, Kashmir’s largest tertiary care institute, have to queue up for hours for an OPD registration card.
The authorities have failed to reduce the waiting time, despite assurances in the past and in spite of introducing an app-based registration system.
Sarwa Begum, who said she was over 80-years-old, accompanied her equally aged husband from Khag Budgam to SMHS Hospital on Monday. Sarwa said she had arrived at the hospital registration counter at 9 am. Visibly fatigued, she finally managed to get OPD registration card at ten minutes past noon, when Greater Kashmir spoke to her. She rushed to the medicine OPD with her patient.
“By the time it’s our turn, the doctor may have left,” she feared.
Another queue awaited her in the OPD area, this one allowing her a slower progress forward, towards the doctor’s room.
Like Sarwa, hundreds of women waited in a queue that extended out of the registration area, out of the shade that had been erected outside the registration area and out on the busy road outside the hospital gate. Many of these women were elderly, many carrying children in their arms, and everyone was either sick or accompanied a sick person. Men had no different story, just a different direction of the queue, extending into the car parking area. Scores of them complained loudly about their patients being very sick, about the long hours that that they had been standing for, about the apathy towards the common masses who have to undergo the ordeal of hours of waiting time for just fetching a card with their name, age, residential address and the hospital department name on it.
For years, the apathy has continued.
A doctor who worked at the hospital said that he has only seen the queues getting longer with every passing week.
“This hospital is over-burdened but that is no excuse for putting people through the misery that they have to bear here,” he said.
He said the OPD registration counters have increased slightly in the past few years. “But these are still far too less than what is required for a hospital like this and for a patient flow that we receive,” he said.
Currently, there are six OPD registration card counters at the hospital, divided between males and females. A separate window has also been opened for the Scan and Share Queue Management System of Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), available on ABHA App.
However, the lack of awareness of this facility and digital illiteracy among many, coupled with non-availability of smart phones for some keeps this queue management system grossly unutilised.
Medical Superintendent SMHS Hospital, Dr Muzaffar Zargar acknowledged the lingering issue of long queues at the hospital, resulting in an unrealistic waiting time.
He said the hospital received an average of 3000 patients per day in OPD.
“All these patients will need to get the registration card, and they all need to provide their details at the window where the card is issued. This definitely takes time,” he said.
Dr Zargar said that despite the Scan and Share facility, many people prefer to queue up.
He said that the hospital received patients from across Kashmir.
“We are a specialty hospital, but we do not have a system to filter patients. Anyone can seek treatment with us, and this increases our load,” he said.