Punjab government is geared up to start online registration of details of patients from December 1, for streamlining the health services and guaranteeing timely treatment to patients.On Monday, Punjab health minister Balbir Singh Sidhu held a meeting with officials of the health department to take stock of progress made about introduction of the online system.

The health minister had earlier directed the department to work out a mechanism to address all concerns of patients about delay in treatment due to manual feeding of records. The department had studied the PGI model and suggested one that could provide details of patients with a single click. Sidhu said that needy patients find it difficult to keep their medical records with them for the further treatment. Thisinitiative would also helpin classifying common diseases across the state. He also said that all sub-divisional hospitals would be linked with online system in a month and laboratories within three months.

This initiative will also help in addressing the issue of lack of medicines and the Punjab Health System Corporation will connect all government hospitals with the online server, which will automatically generate the order of medicines. The minister said that it would also make easy to monitor the availability of stocks of around 250 kinds of free medicines in government hospitals.

Reviewing the increasing cases of dengue, the role of health, local government and rural development department was discussed in detail for prevention of dengue. The health minister alsohighlighted that the district teams of health department should pay special attention to migratory populations, where the maximum number of dengue cases had been reported. He said that dengue can be prevented by proactive role of local government in urban areas and rural development and panchayats in rural areas of the state.

Revising the functioning of health and wellness centers, Sidhu had informed the civil surgeons to conduct regular survey of patients under non-communicable diseases programme so as to provide treatment to newly identified patients of diabetes, hypertension and other common diseases. He also instructed the civil surgeons that medical and para-medical staff would display their identity-cards and special budget would be allotted for uniforms.

Source: ET Healthworld