New Delhi: The National Health Authority (NHA) under his Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), had started a faster OPD registration service for patients through Scan and Share functionality with the aim of reducing the long waiting time for patient registration.
The start of the piloted scheme from a single hospital in New Delhi in October 2022 has now been extended to up to 125 districts in 25 states and Union Territories (UTs). At least 700 public and private hospitals use this facility for quick registration of patients by scanning unique QR codes available at the facility.
In February 2023, among the top user states, Karnataka led the issuance of 2.5 lakh tokens, followed by Uttar Pradesh and Delhi in total number of registrations. Recently, Karnataka State ranked 2nd in National Health Authority Scan and Share service for fastest OPD (Outpatient Department) registration with a total of 7,40,124 tokens generated.
The service allows patients to simply scan the participating hospital/health center’s unique QR Code using any health app of their choice (such as ABHA applicationArogya Setu App, EkaCare, DRiefcase, Bajaj Health, PayTM) and share your ABHA profile.
“By using ABHA, we allow patient demographics — their name, address, age, all of these things — to be automatically transported to OPD’s computer of record, which reduces time and errors,” he said. dr basant gargAdditional CEO, National Health Authority (NHA) speaking exclusively to ETHeathworld.
According to Dr. Garg, patients can save time from 55 minutes to about 4 minutes with this Scan and Share service. He claimed that it helps save considerable time and makes the patient journey much easier. Furthermore, the NHA has also set itself an ambitious target of achieving over Rs 100 crore in Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) records by the end of the year 2023. As of now, 23.3 million has been created of rupees from ABHA cards. ABHA ID acts as an intermediary to pass a patient’s information to the health facility.
ETHealthworld reached out to domain experts, including Sir CV Raman General Hospital Medical Superintendent, Dr. Radhakrishna, who stated that when patients arrive at the hospital, they scan the barcode and there is no need to queue. “Patients get the token number after which they can go directly to the counter to collect their OPD card and go to the doctor for their consultation. With the ABHA number, the patient can go to any hospital and all the previous medical history can be retrieved without the need for patients to carry all the physical medical reports,” he said.
CV Raman General Hospital was the second state-funded hospital in India to implement QR code-based registration. Based on his experience with the Scan and Share service, Dr. Radhakrishna listed several benefits of the scheme, namely hassle-free registration, faster inquiries leading to less crowding in the DPO area, and reduced overall time to seek treatment.
Scan and Share is one of the first use cases of ABDM to help people realize the benefit of digital health data, said D Randeep, IAS, Commissioner, Family Health and Welfare Services, Government of Karnataka, and He added that “Using Scan and Share is ‘one step’ ahead of making use of the digital ecosystem as shown by the state of Karnataka. This also gives individuals and hospitals a hands-on experience of digitized workflow in hospitals.”
Speaking about the challenges faced by hospitals in Karnataka during the early implementation of QR code based records, Randeep said, “At first, we started with very few hospitals in Bangalore as a pilot project. As we scaled it up, knowledge and experience of ABDM among hospital staff was low. Repeated training and reviews had to be done to gain some momentum. The availability of chip number display screens was reported as a challenge. This was overcome through the use of funds from Ayushman Bharat Arogya Karnataka (AB-PMJAY-ArK) which flowed towards government hospitals.”
Delving into the challenges in increasing adoption of digital mission, Dr. Garg commented that in the public sector, large government programs like NCD, RCH, and Ni-Kshay are being incorporated into ABDM. They are in the process of submitting the software complaint to ABDM.
“But on the private side, we feel like it’s pretty fragmented. There are a large number of HMI solutions available and different hospitals are using different types of solutions. And we have a more conciliatory or more accommodative approach when it comes to software companies. We are trying to encourage them to modify their software according to the ABDM guidelines. We are also trying to encourage hospitals and insurers to apply for ABHA, ask the citizen and encourage the citizen to register with ABHA,” added Dr. Garg.
ABHA was not available to all patients, Randeep said as he decoded the Karnataka government’s strategy. He added that we created ABHA on the spot for those who didn’t have it. OTP based authentication was slow in the early days. Now it’s back, but we started using biometric authentication for ABHA.
According to Randeep, the availability of decent IT infrastructure, presence of Hospital Management Information System in all hospitals, motivated workforce under eHealth programs, good guidance, regular reviews and thanks gestures were some of the right strategies that helped encourage hospitals. projecting good numbers in linking the medical records of patients.
Dr. Basant Garg hinted at the strategy that the NHA will follow in the coming months to achieve the arduous task of achieving 100 crore ID from ABHA.
NHA is also planning to go to the next level where sick patients going to the lab will also have access to the digital health records. “The reports will be uploaded into the software, and if the patient is registered through ABHA, they will get the reports in their accounts,” which provides a lot of convenience for patients who would otherwise have to travel back just to collect your diagnostic reports.
Through it, the doctor can view all the research reports available on the patient’s smartphone. In addition to this, unnecessary duplication would be avoided and since the reports will be available for longer, it will also be economical for both the hospital and the patients. In other words, Scan and Share is the start, but the far-reaching effects are there to be seen.
