Mumbai: The city has two major medical colleges and 19 E Maharashtra The Monday deadline set by is set to be missed National Medical Commission (NMC) to start using Hospital Management Information System (HMIS), a digital tool for collecting, storing and processing health information. NMC, India’s medical education regulator, is using digital tools to improve patient care and efficiency of teaching hospitals.
In Mumbai, BYL Nair and RN Cooper are the only major colleges of education that have started using HMIS for 60% of services. However, LTMG in Sion and KEM in Parel have not installed the software and started their scramble for equipment for digital operations. Outside Mumbai, the medical education department abruptly shut down HMIS in 14 medical colleges four months ago due to disagreements with providers over upgrades and charges. Far from digitizing all operations, almost all state-run colleges revert to manual record-keeping.
On October 4, NMC in a brief letter asked deans of all medical colleges to start using HMIS. “Failure to do so will be viewed seriously,” read the letter written by NMC chairman Dr Suresh Chandra Sharma. The letter said that any new college recognition, renewal, increase in seats will be denied if the institution does not have a fully functional HMIS to digitally register outpatients and inpatients, surgeries, lab and radiology tests, childbirth etc.
Chief Civil Hospital Director Dr Neelam Andrade confirmed that only Nair and Cooper will meet the Monday deadline, while the rest are yet to meet. The idea of HMIS was opposed by doctors, nurses and technical staff at BMC, who said it was impractical to log each patient’s data when hundreds of people were in queues. “But with the NMC’s orders, the HMIS cannot go away now,” Andrade told TOI.
Nair Hospital was the first to start using HMIS as a pilot in 2018. 10 With strong resistance to tampered computers and printers, the hospital now sees 100% OPD registrations, 80% blood reports, billing, discharges and pharmacy supplies logged online. Dean Dr. “Every change is initially met with resistance, but physicians have come to see the benefit,” said Pravin Rathi. The hospital registers 22 lakh patients annually, details of which can be accessed online within minutes, he said.
MCGM HMIS Nodal Officer Dr. Sarika Chapane said HMIS has reduced patient registration time from four hours to more than half, prevented duplication of pathological and radiological tests in medico-legal cases and expedited discharges allowing beds to be opened faster. However, there is still no inpatient detailing on the HMIS due to resistance from nurses and lack of manpower. Dr. Andrade said the BMC will soon issue a tender for an upgraded HMIS that will allow patients to pay digitally, book appointments, etc., in addition to cash.
