Locating patient at PGI now easy

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, April 1

For attendants of patients, who keep shuttling across different buildings and wards to locate their patients at the PGI, the ordeal seems to have ended.

The PGI today launched an information kiosk, which, in addition to providing information on all forms of services, will allow attendants to know the exact location of their patients.

The institute today also started the facility of online OPD registration for first-time visitors (patients) in five departments, 15 days after launching it in the Advanced Eye Centre.

Prof Yogesh Chawla, Director, PGI, inaugurated the first information kiosk in Nehru Hospital. Ten more such kiosks will be set up in different buildings over the next three months.

The facility of online registration for first-time visitors in five more departments — Dermatology, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Orthopaedics, Drug De-addiction and Treatment Centre and Oral Health Sciences Centre — started today.

The facility has been introduced as a pilot project and only 40 patients will be issued the pre-registration numbers and CR numbers using the online appointment facility.

A link available on the PGI website allows the pre-registration by issuing a reference number and a CR number. On visiting the pre-registration counter on the chosen day, the OPD card will be issued within a minute (as claimed by the authorities at the PGI).

The patients can register themselves for a visit to the respective departments on a chosen date in the next one week by accessing the official website of the PGI. After filling in some information, a pre-registration number will be sent to their registered mobile number and e-mail ID. By presenting this number at the special pre-registration counter of the department concerned on the chosen day, an out patient department card with a unique and permanent patient CR number will be generated immediately and the patient will not have to wait for the turn for registration.

The facility assumes significance since most of the patients are forced to wait for two to three hours in queues for the registration before meeting the doctor every day and this wait cause lot of harrasment to the patients.
More than 7,000 patients visit the OPD of the PGI daily and there are nearly 15 registration counters catering to the OPD patients  from 8 am to 11 am every day.